[3830] WC1M ARRL DX CW SOAB HP UNASSISTED

[Dick]

                             ARRL DX CW CONTEST
  Call used: WC1M
  Location: NH
  Category: Single Op All Band High-Power Unassisted

  Hours of Operation: 30:12

  band      QSOs      points    mults
  -----------------------------------
  160          0           0       0   None
   80         28          84      19   Inv vee @ 65'
   40        467        1401      58   4-square
   20        611        1833      81   TH-7 @ 70' / Gap Titan
   15        639        1917      82   ditto
   10        530        1590      65   ditto
  -----------------------------------
  TOTAL     2275        6825     305      SCORE: 2,081,625

  Club or Team Name: Twin State Radio Club

  TS950SDX / Alpha 87A
  FT-990 / SB-221
  TopTen switches and NA software

Best score yet, but still a long way to go.

First experience with two-radio single-op -- it's a lot like learning to
walk and chew gum at the same time. Very confusing at first, but got much
better with time. Really helped on the mult total, as did paying a lot more
attention to that department. Still lots of room for improvement.

Spent three months building automatic antenna/rig/stub switching. My
brilliant idea of automatically switching the 87A between the rigs was great
in theory but a bust in practice. the amp just doesn't retune fast enough
for the rapid switching between radios that happens under real contest
conditions using NA's F4 feature. Too many characters ended up being sent at
low power. It would have worked OK for switching back and forth without the
automatic CQ restart, etc., but I was also experiencing some timing problems
that sometimes caused the amp's protection circuits to trip (relay switching
delays, no doubt.) No time to troubleshoot, but luckily I had installed my
trusty old SB-221 as a backup -- one flick of a switch disabled amp sharing
and enabled the SB-221. It worked fine. Losing 500 watts didn't seem to hurt
much, and the second radio stayed on each band much longer than I had
anticipated. So, autotune wasn't necessary after all. There's a point where
theory leaves off and experience begins.

My antennas are pretty modest. The GAP was OK for working multipliers, but
things worked a lot better when I was able to run one radio on the 4-square
and the other on the TH-7. I think the most cost effective improvement I
could make would be to add a small tribander or 10/15 dual bander fixed
South for working multipliers. No more room on the tubular crankup, so
perhaps a tree-mounted beam would work. You know, I think all the RF from
high-power contesting does something funny to brain cells. I've been having
these strange obsessions lately...

As for operating, Friday evening was pretty poor and I thought the whole
contest would be a grind. The high bands shut down early and the low bands
were really noisy. Then the European sunrise opening burst on the scene at
about 06:30 and things just kept getting better. I slept from about 0830 to
1300 and woke to an incredible European run on 10M Saturday AM. Moving to
15M later in the AM produced similar heavy runs. 20M was so-so until about
1800. Even then, it was kind of noisy. I kept going back to 10 and 15, which
produced good runs all day. 40 was disappointing Saturday night -- lots of
noise. Couldn't do much on 80 at all. I decided to sleep from about 0430 to
0930, deliberately giving up the European sunrise opening in favor of maybe
catching some good VK/ZL or Asian stuff during our sunrise. That was
probably the wrong strategy because nothing materialized. Probably would
have been better off with a couple of 3 hour naps: one from 0330 to 0630 and
one from 0830 to 1130. Then I would have caught the European sunrise and the
10M morning opening.

Had a little bit of luck running JAs on 15M during the late afternoon and
early evening on Sunday, but no spectacular runs. Worked a few Asians and
VK/ZL throughout the contest -- nice mults but not many QSOs. Hardly heard a
peep from Africa. The Europeans and Asiatic Russians were really the main
event in this contest. I can't remember ever working so many Russians.

I'm still pretty new at this -- gotta lot to learn about propagation and
operating technique. Maybe a few stints at a big multi-multi would help.

Of course, the best solution would be to work the whole contest. How the
heck do you top scorers do that? My brain has a hard time functioning when
it's swimming in too much toxic waste...

My deeply felt thanks to the tons of Europeans who made this contest really
fun. I'm especially grateful to those who put up with my periodic loss of
ability to copy CW. I can certainly blame the QRN (some of it local, from my
3-year old), QRM, weak signals, mini-pileups, "creative" fists and inability
of many ops to zero beat within the skirts of narrow filters. My own fatigue
was probably understandable at times. But I also have this strange dislexia
when it comes to "S" and "H",  B" and "D", and "G" and "Z", especially after
an 8-hour session without a break. I've really got to work on that! Random
code practice, anyone?

73, Dick, WC1M



--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/3830faq.html
Submissions:              3830 at contesting.com
Administrative requests:  3830-REQUEST at contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-3830 at contesting.com