[3830] 7J1AAI ARRL DX CW

[Hal Offutt]

7J1AAI  ARRL DX CW Results  (SO HP)

Band    Q's      Mults
15         266      50
20         244      41

Total     510     91            Score  139,230

Op time:  4 hrs 40 mins


Comments:

Couldn't put in a full effort so picked Sunday morning to make the treck
from downtown Tokyo out to JH1GTV's great station in Tokyo's western
suburbs.  The trip involves a taxi ride to the train station, about 40
minutes on the train and another taxi at the other end.  I left my
apartment about 6 AM but there are not very many taxis on Tokyo's streets
at this hour and it took me about 10 minutes to find one.  Then a 15 minute
wait at Yotsuya Station - there also are not very many trains running at
this hour - and then the only train was a local.  I figetted while the
train made 16 stops, wondering how many contacts I was losing.  Finally
made it to Shige's at about 7:20 AM (2220 Z), about 25 minutes later than
planned. 

We hurried into the shack and Shige turned on the rig while I got my laptop
set up.  The dial was set to a frequency high in the cw band and the first
thing we heard was "QST DE W1AW" at about S7.  Wow!  Spinning the dial, I
could see that the band was full of stations.  Great.  I found a frequency
and managed to put out my first CQ at about 22:32.  I think that was the
last CQ I had to make for well over an hour.  Immediately I was swamped
with calling stations.  The first few contacts were less than smooth.  When
I went to work my first station I couldn't find the "ins" key!  I was using
a brand new laptop and the "num lock" key was where the "ins" key was on my
old computer.  I also had problems with some of the other keys and then I
couldn't find the rit control on Shig'e unfamiliar ICOM 775.  How I hate
hurried starts.

But after a few minutes of fumbling, I figured out where the important keys
and knobs were and settled down.  For the first 30 minutes there were 8-10
stations calling after nearly every qso, with about half of them nearly
zero-beat.   Thank goodness for those ops who knew enough to call a little
low or high!  That really helps. I was having lots of four-qso minutes and
the rate meter was frequently over 200 during the first half hour.  The
first 60 minutes ended with 158 contacts, a very fun rate indeed. 
Inevitably, things slowed and for the remaining 3.5 hours the rate was
right around 100.    After a couple of hours, I noticed that the computer
time was still on U.S. East Coast time.  Actually it was 4:53 hours behind
GMT.  In my hurried start, I had neglected to set the clock before
beginning and my log shows the wrong time for every contact!  Is there an
easy way to fix the times like this in NA?  I know how to fix the time of
each individual contact, but I'd rather not do this operation 510 times!

On 15 Meters, signals were strong from all parts of the country, but for
the first hour the Ones seemed to be stronger than the rest of the East
Coast and nearly as strong as the West Coast but with just the smallest
amount of flutter.   I don't know what kind of conditions I missed on 20
while I was on 15, but after I moved there I just never achieved the same
kind of rates that I did on 15.  Signals from the East Coast were always
there but they were weak and few in number.  I suppose most East Coast
stations were busy on 40 and 80 at that hour (0000-0300 Z).

Thanks for the contacts in this great contest. Someday I hope to be able to
put in a full effort from Japan.   And thanks again to Shige JH1GTV for the
use of his very fine station.

73,

Hal Offutt W1NN/7J1AAI
  

               

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