[3830] ARRLDX SSB WC1M SOAB(A) HP

[dick.green at valley.net]

                     ARRL DX Contest, SSB
                    
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): 
Station: 

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 25
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band     QSOs  Mults
----------------------
  160:      6      5
   80:     48     36
   40:     77     51
   20:    301     92
   15:    585    104
   10:    891    111
----------------------
Total:   1908    399  =  2,282,679

Club: YCCC

Comments:

Equipment:

FT-1000D / Alpha 87A (sort of)
FT-1000MP / ACOM 2000A (ditto)
Writelog by W5XD

Antennas:

160M: E-W Trapped inverted vee @ 55'
 80M: NE/SW Delta loop at 75' / E-W Trapped inverted vee @55'
 40M: Full-size 4-square with 60 ground radials per element
 20M: TH-7 @70' (U.S. Tower MA-770MDP tubular) / C3E @ 50' (AB-577/GRC mast)
 15M: TH-7 @70' (U.S. Tower MA-770MDP tubular) / C3E @ 50' (AB-577/GRC mast)
 10M: TH-7 @70' (U.S. Tower MA-770MDP tubular) / C3E @ 50' (AB-577/GRC mast)

 580' NE beverage for 160M/80M/40M

My plan for this contest was to arrive at Manchester, NH airport on Friday 
afternoon from a week-long trip to Seattle and high-tail it over to the KR1G 
multi-multi to work about half the contest. I had planned to work as much of 
the second half as possible from home -- the classic double-dip for the club.

Well, thanks partly to the 6.8 earthquake in Seattle on Wednesday, it didn't 
quite work out that way. I won't bore you with the details, but it was quite a 
shake. There's nothing quite like momentarily wondering whether your life is 
going to end (or you are going to get badly hurt) to make you appreciate what 
you have. So, when I got back to NH, I decided to head right home to see my 
wife and daughter. I was also really tired, as it would have been an intense 
trip even without the earthquake. I hated to bug out on KR1G at the last minute 
like that, but after all the excuse was pretty darned good! Sorry, Ted.

I decided not to operate on Friday night at all so I could spend time with the 
family. I'll bet I missed decent 160M, 80M and 20M EU sunrise openings -- they 
sure weren't there the second night. I figured the best way to run up points 
would be to operate Assisted. I decided to concentrate on the mornings of both 
days, with as much in-between as possible. I managed about 25 hours, which is a 
lot more than I thought I would do.

Much happened that, again, I won't bore you with. The most exciting moment came 
when it appeared that all three autotune amps I have here failed hard (they 
don't all belong to me.) I believe at list price that would amount to something 
like $17,000 worth of worthless amps. Later I realized that one of them had 
simply lost its antenna tuning parameters, which were easily restored. I had 
some problems with that later, so I think perhaps the amp was picking up some 
RFI from the other radio or the backup battery needs to be changed. Probably 
the latter, as I didn't have the same problem in the CW portion.

At least two of the amps are in fact dead, but the causes haven't been verified 
and the manufacturers haven't had time to respond, so I don't want to say 
anything that might reflect poorly on a product or company. These are extremely 
well-designed and well-built products, and sometimes (rarely) things go wrong. 
One amp I plan to troubleshoot myself (carefully!) and one will be repaired by 
the manufacturer within 24 hours. Perhaps I'll comment more at another time. 
I'm just glad it didn't happen during the CW weekend.

This did give me a chance to discover that 200W with the FT-1000D is more or 
less sufficient for working all but the biggest pileups on 10M and 15M, and is 
pretty adequate for second radio S&P (if you're not trying to win high power, 
that is...) Nonetheless, I did a lot less second radio tuning and consequently 
got a chance to practice SO1R technique!

The only other thing I can say is that I'm still not wild about phone contests. 
40M split operation is terrible for the USA and 80M is not much better unless 
conditions are really good. It sure would be nice if one of those WARC meetings 
would deal with 40M (yeah, I've contributed to the fund.) The fun part was 
running really high rates on 10M both mornings -- the rate meter topped 200/hr 
and more than half my QSOs were on that band. Sometimes I was amazed by how 
fast I was talking. Other than that, phone QRM is very unpleasant and I had 
more trouble finding a place to run on the high bands in this contest than any 
other in the last few years.

Operating Assisted with WriteLog and autotune amps can be a gas at times, but 
for me it's just not the same as going Unassisted. It becomes very mechanical 
and strategy tends to go on the back burner. I ran this way for the club and my 
team, but I would never do it for a serious all-out effort -- there's just not 
enough meaning in it for me.

I don't want to start a flame war, but maybe we need to think about having one 
major DX contest in the fall or spring with no packet, no multi-multis 
(multi-two would be cool), and sane rules for multi-single (e.g., just one 
radio, or an SO2R setup -- i.e., all QSOs go through only one operator's brain 
at any time -- that's what "single" means -- not two radios on the same band 
with a bunch of mult radios on other bands!) Perhaps it ought to be less than 
48 hours, too, so you have to pick your times very carefully. Maybe it should 
be XX hours out of 48 (favors the Northeast), or maybe just the same XX hours 
for everyone (more fair.) If scoring were more distance-based, then the 
Northeast wouldn't have such a huge advantage. This is sort of like IARU (which 
has grown in popularity), but at a better time of year and with even better 
rules and scoring.

The idea is that skill, strategy and antennas would be at a premium -- not just 
being a packet-driven run machine. I think the result would be less crowding, 
pileups that can be broken with low power and a good antenna, and a lot more 
emphasis on strategy, operating skill and station design. I also think that the 
scores would be a lot closer, like in SS. The flame suit is on.

Meanwhile, I can't wait 'til WPX CW and IARU --  see you then!

73, Dick WC1M



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