K6LA CW CQWW Score and Comments

[KWIDELITZ at delphi.com]

                    CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 1996

      Call: K6LA                         Zone: 3, U. S.
      Mode: CW                       Category: SOHP, unassisted

      BAND     QSO   QSO PTS  PTS/QSO   ZONES COUNTRIES

      160       10       18     1.80      5       4
       80       83      200     2.41     22      36
       40      676     1831     2.71     33      79
       20      712     1909     2.68     33      87
       15      149      358     2.40     24      54
       10       28       43     1.54     11      12
     ---------------------------------------------------

     Totals   1658     4359     2.63    128     272  =>  1,743,600
                                                         44 hours
Equipment Description:

TS-950SD,  TS-950SDX,  Alpha  87A,  Dentron  MLA  2500
DuneStar Bandpass Filters, TopTen Automatic Stub Selection  Boxes
and Band Decoders, DuneStar antenna phasing boxes for stacks.

160 Meters:   1/4 wave balloon vertical (stuck in a tree at about
              the 40 foot level for a few feet,) 250' beverage at
              105 degrees.
80 Meters:    Force 12 EF180S rotating dipole @ 77'
40 Meters:    Force 12 EF340 3 element monobander @ 72'
20 Meters:    Force 12 EF420 4 element monobanders stacked at 85'/53'
15/10 Meters: Force 12 EF515/410 5 element on 15 / 4 element on 10
              interlaced on one boom, stacked at 53'/33'

Comments:

One  of the highlights of my contesting career  occured  Saturday
morning,  just  before sunrise. On the second radio, at  1415,  I
heard  EU2LCU on 20. I didn't know if I would hear  much  Europe,
this being the bottom of the sunspot cycle, so I broke a good  JA
run  on 40 and started S&Ping at the top of 20. After 5  QSOs,  I
hit  solid RTTY and spun the dial down to 14.000 to start  S&Ping
up  the band. To my surprise, as I started tuning up the band,  I
found no one was there. No one in the band edge? So I hit F1,  to
CQ,  once. Which at 1423 was answered by DF4SA which began a  130
QSO  European run. The last 10 rate hit 113 and last 100 hit  84.
That  might not seem like a great rate to East Coasters, but  for
an  hour  and three-quarters, with a snappy new 1X2  call,  using
stacked  monobanders for the first time in a DX contest,  I  felt
like I was KING OF 20 METERS, RUNNING EUROPE IN THE BAND EDGE.  I
even  had  the  thrill of successfully repelling  on  outside  in
squeeze  manuver by a  certain W2 who tried to slowly creep  down
on me every few CQs.

Overall, except for 160, where I expected to do much better  with
the  balloon vertical and short beverage, I  thought  propagation
was  surprisingly  good. The only doldrums for me were  02  -  03
Sunday  morning.  Maybe it was being in the chair over  26  hours
straight,  but  all of a sudden there seemed to be a  paucity  of
signals.  After not working a station for 1/2 hour, I took a  1/2
hour  break,  came  back for 10 minutes, heard  nothing  new  and
decided  to  take a nap. I woke up after about 2 1/2  hours  off,
before  the  alarm,  and 40 was hopping again.  Taking  that  nap
helped  me avoid undulating carpet pattern and wavy  rig  display
syndrome Sunday afternoon.

I never heard zones 21, 22, 23, 37, or 39 on any band. I heard  a
/MM station in zone 34 on 40, but it was the only zone I heard  I
wasn't able to work. I'd like to hear from other zone 3  stations
to hear who, when and where they picked up those zones.

For the first time I used Miniprop Plus on a second computer  and
found it valuable and fun to keep the auto updating freqency  map
display  in  view.  It updates every 5  minutes  and  displays  a
rectagular  world map, broken into over 700 rectangles,  centered
on  the station location, color coded to show the highest  usable
frequency under the MUF.  I think the CAPMAN projections may have
been  somewhat more accurate, but it is really neat to watch  the
Miniprop  display as the color coded areas move. I  probably  can
play with the options in Miniprop Plus to get its projections  to
match  CAPMAN.  The minimum radiation angle and  additive  signal
level constants options should do the trick. If anyone has played
with these values, I'd like to get the benefit of your experience.

It  seems  packet  makes a big difference on the  west  coast.  A
packet  announcement showed a SOHP Assisted at 4.0  million  with
only 1,000 QSOs. I made 1,658 QSOs, but the mults put me  at only
1.7  million and I hunted for mults on the second  radio  a lot.

73. Ken, K6LA - Ken Six Los Angeles, KWIDELITZ at DELPHI.COM
                ex-AB6FO

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