[3830] WPX CW-N3BB

[Jim George, N3BB]

This was my first serious S/O in a while.  Also the first two radio
oparation as a S/O.  That part made me a litle nervous in advance, but it
all went very well.  In fact, the 2R made a strong positive difference.  I
used CT and two independent stations and PCs and keyboards etc.  It was
better having two keyboards so I could type in the proposed call and check
it w/o having to mess with the run station/keyboad.  The people who can
operate 2R from one keyboard with TR are geniuses and my hat is off to
them.  Also I like the CT screen and ergonomics and it was comfortable to
get back to it.

There were very very few periods when the bands were "hot opon" to
anywhere.  20 opened about local midnight over the pole to East Eu and deep
Asia.  40 had a hot hour each morning before our SRT to JA/Asia.  15 was
"hot open" to JA only about 30-45 minutes once on our local Saturday night
about 2300Z.  40 also was (with a large antenna and difficulty) runnable to
Europe for a period after our SST, but that was semi-miserable.  All in all
there were probably two hours of hot runs to anywhere the whole weekend.  A
rough contest with marginal conditions.  It seemed that the larger stations
worked each other on three bands most of the time all weekend.

But the WPX is one of my favorite contests.  I can't wait till 1999 when
the local country contacts count.  That will make this a great contest and
spark a huge amount of interest.  The non-coastal gang congratulate N8BJQ!

The raw summary is as follows:

Band          QSOs           QSO points          points/QSO          PXs

160-nil
80              3                  8                   2.7             1
40            407               1842                   4.5           144
20            778               1298                   1.7           350
15            580                970                   1.7           163
10             21                 52                   2.5             9

Totals       1789               4170                   2.3           667

Score 2.781 Meg

73, Jim



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