[3830] IARU DL3YBM SO CW

[Gissel, Andreas]

                      IARU HF Championship -- 2001


      Call:      DL3YBM
      Category:  Single Operator
      Power:     High Power
      Band:      All Band
      Mode:      CW 
      Country:   Fed. Rep. of Germany

     BAND      QSO   QSO-PTS   PTS/Q    ZONES  HQ STNS


      160        5        7     1.40      1      4
       80       99      189     1.91      7     24
       40      259      699     2.70     21     27
       20      423     1461     3.45     29     27
       15      303     1065     3.51     28     27
       10       69      177     2.57     11     18
     ---------------------------------------------------

     Totals   1158     3598     3.11     97    127

                 Score: 805,952 points



All reports sent were 59(9), unless otherwise noted.

Equipment Description: TS 940 SAT, TL 922
                       3 ele triband yagi for 10 / 15 / 20
                       Vertical for 40
                       Inv L for 80 / 160



Club Affiliation: RRDXA

Comments:

First of all, this was a FUN event. I had planned to do a serious effort
since there will be changes to the way I do contesting from now on - we are
expecting our first child at the end of August (hi, maybe this is the time
to start thinking about multi op contesting).

The last time I operated this contest was back in 1988 when I was in
Houston, TX as an exchange student and visited the NR5M contest farm. In
fact, it was during that wonderful summer that I really became interested in
contesting due to the mentorship of NR5M, N5DU, K2TNO, K5LZO, KG5U et al.

There were several technical challenges to be mastered before the contest.
One was the problem I had keying the TS 940 S from my laptop using LPT1. In
fact that thing worked fine on my FT 920 and TS 140, but wouldn't work with
the 940. I was very convinced all I had to do was change the plug - WRONG! I
tried several plug / installation / booting combos to no avail. In
desperation on Friday night I then installed CT on my second laptop, and
guess what: it was plug and play.
Second problem was raising the inverted L for 80. This antenna is suspended
by a tree in my parent's garden, and this was the first time I was trying to
put it up in summer. It turned out to be much more tricky to do the
installation with the garden in full blossoms, but finally it went up late
Friday night.

Strategy for the contest was easy: work the highest open band as long as
possible and avoid 80 and 160 as much as possible (in fact, I don't even
have any antenna for 160 these days). Following that strategy was even more
easy, since 10 was very poor (no DX heared the entire contest), I just
scanned the band occasionally for new mults. 15 sounded good (nice signals
to both JA and the Pacific both days), I just couldn't get any run going
there. 20 was great, with a superb opening to the US and the west coast in
particular very early Sunday morning. 40 was ok, 80 not as noisy as
expected. I even managed to work 5 Q's on 160 though I figured that I almost
had more RF power being reflected back then transmitted, hi.
The weather was pretty humid, thus the temp in the shack reached really high
levels. This caused the amp to fail in the middle of the night (it just went
into stand-by mode), but after some extra cooling and shutting it down for
30 min it came back.

With the modest setup I am usually not running for a really high score from
an objective point of view, but rather try to reach my pre-set goals and /
or beat my previous year's score. Since I didn't have the latter, I was
shooting for 1.2 K Q's and 750 K points. Looks like I achieved the goal
result-wise and almost reached the Q goal, so I am pretty much satisfied
with the outcome.

Very special thanks to my XYL (and the yet unknwon second OP) who gave their
ok for the contest and my mum for brewing some badly needed coffee Sunday
morning (yes, I know, one shouldn't rely on caffeine to stay awake, but I
have to - an obvious lack of willpower). And, of course, tnx to all for the
Q's.

Vy 73 de Andy, DL3YBM




This is to certify that in this contest I have operated
my transmitter within the limitations of my license and have
observed fully the rules and regulations of the contest.


                             Signature _________________________________

           MAILING ADDRESS:


               Dr. Andreas (Andy) Gissel  DL3YBM
               Zum Seeblick 36
               Haltern,   45721
_


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