CQWW CW: C31LJ

[Peter Jennings]

                    CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1996


      Call: C31LJ (QSL VIA VE3GEJ)   Country:  Andorra
      Mode: CW                       Category: SO/HP/20m/Assisted

      BAND     QSO   QSO PTS  PTS/QSO   ZONES COUNTRIES

       20     1585     3482     2.20     27     110
     ---------------------------------------------------

     Totals   1585     3482     2.20     27     110  =>  477,034


Equipment Description:  FT-1000, Amplifier, 6 ele KLM monobander

Club Affiliation: NCCC (Northern California Contest Club)

After the SSB effort at C31LD, Xavier generously invited me to use his
station for the CW contest. A blizzard last week put an end to thoughts of
spending the weekend without sleep. The 80 meter beam now has zero elements.
The 40 meter beam has one negative vertical element that prevents the 10
meter beam from rotating. There is still too much ice on the towers to think
about working on them yet. It was a good excuse to take it easy and
concentrate on 20 meters.

I have come to the conclusion that experience with billiards is necessary to
operate from this QTH. A mountain blocks all signals between 330 degrees and
100 degrees. The effect is obvious when looking at the zone total. By aiming
the beam at other mountains the signals from those directions could
sometimes be brought up above the noise level, but with lots of multipath
echoes and odd effects. I never heard anything from the zones I didn't work
despite using packet and spending a lot of time hunting.

Photo facing north-east: http://www.benlo.com/c31ld.jpg

The plus side is that most of Europe is behind that mountain as well, so the
listening was quiet. Who needs those 1 pointers anyway? But a few more mults
would be nice.

Woke up several times during Friday night to check the band but never heard
a peep. At one point I listened to 80 to make sure I hadn't got the weekend
wrong and went back to bed.

Around 0600 signals began to come in from zones 20 and 21, but I couldn't be
heard off the backs of their beams facing east. Around 0700, exactly at
sunrise, Europeans started to appear and I began a gentle run. VR2PF shocked
me by calling in at 0728 and I expected a slew of JAs to follow, but the
only one I worked was on an S&P excursion. XX9X also found me running
Europeans, which was encouraging.

At 0917 K1AM called in on some skewed night time path, followed quickly by
all the multi-op stations along the east coast. Isn't packet wonderful?
Maybe they didn't believe it either, because most of them duped me later.

As I watched the gray line move towards North America I kept saying to
myself that I should grab a bite to eat before the band opens. But the Euros
kept calling and I kept running. At 1129Z I was spotted in the US and that
was the end of my lunch plans. Sunday I put some munchies within arms length
of the radio. At 2000 someone pulled the plug and the ionosphere shut down
from here.

On Sunday morning there were some sporadic openings to JA, but the signals
were watery weak due to not being able to beam anywhere near their
direction. Most of the signals I heard were just at the noise level and each
call took several tries as I filled in the dits one by one.

At 0910 I worked TA3D after figuring out that he was listening down 0.250.
There was a pileup calling him on his own frequency but he kept CQing.
Wonder when he figured out that his RIT was off. But on that frequency I
discovered that FK8HC was answering my call to TA3D. Sure glad I noticed
that. But it took about a dozen tries to convince him I was C31 not C21.
Funny how your expectations vary with location.

Sunday afternoon was back to working stateside. Love all those new 1x2 and
2x2 calls. You could hear the pride in the keying. WU1ITU? You're kidding.
Time for an update to Super Check Partial. I owned 14.164 for about 6 hours
so I hope everyone found me eventually.

With the mountain partially blocking the west coast, I kept waiting for some
kind of opening. Around 1445 a few weak ones were worked. 6C? should have
made a QSO but K6LA was in a hurry to get back to his other radio and run
frequency and kept answering my 6C? so I worked him to be able to hear. Then
the general QRM came back up and 6C? never did get through. I was sorry
about that. I've probably done the same to someone else when I needed a mult
and I apologize now. Contesting makes the adrenaline flow sometimes. Or is
it the testosterone?

There was another weak opening to W6 around 2100Z heralded by W6OAT followed
by as many of the NCCC members as I could hear. Then they were gone again.
This was more than 4 hours after sunset so it came as a bit of a surprise.
Maybe that 91 flux number made a difference somewhere. I am curious what my
signal was like over there.

At 2150 I was about to fold up the tent when a flash opening brought 5 new
countries in 10 minutes. It was the only time I heard HC8N in the entire
contest and the signal peaked 90 degrees from where it should have been.
Billiards again. As usual one call was all it took for the super ears down
there.

I discovered another advantage of operating with packet assistance. When I
see myself spotted I can move towards the frequency shown. Now I know why so
many people call 200-300 Hz off my frequency at times. It's a pain for both
of us when that is someone elses run frequency. I remember working someone
on phone from V31DX several years ago. When I pointed out he was a full 1
KHz from my frequency he retorted that that was where I should have been
according to the packet spot, so that was where he called me. I think more
stations were on zero beat when we had separate transmitters and receivers. 

Thanks to all for the Qs and the packet spots. This was fun.

73
Peter



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