[3830] SCC RTTY PA5AT SOAB LP

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                    SCC RTTY Championship

Call: PA5AT
Operator(s): PA5AT
Station: PA5AT

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Hoofddorp/NL
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts   Mults
-------------------------
   80:   70   140    39
   40:   75   155    39
   20:  152   359    50
   15:  112   265    47
   10:   45   103    31
-------------------------
Total:  454  1022   206  Total Score = 210,532

Club: 

Comments:

What a busy weekend ... but how much fun !
The weekend starts with the weather report on friday evening... rain rain rain
!
A good argument far a weekend with just the TRX in front of me...hi

Have never partissipated the contest before. Therefore I didn't have any
strategic plan or even target maps in front of me as usual. LOT's of fun !!!
The condx started rather slow - late afternoon, suddenly 10m starts to open for
EU-short skip - I was there immeadiately. this condx is a favour for me with
just my low wire antenna, having no beam. Every stn was multi immediately and
within 30min 24 muti's worked by search and pounce a lot.
Unfortunately I cannot take so much advantage of the picking up DX-condx on 15m
when the bands starts to improve in the evening... a million for the antenna
set-up of our PI4COM in my garden...please...!
It is really heavy to keep search and pounce for 24 hours and don't give up.
Sometimes I just got tired and start calling myself - usually on 15m my rate
immediately gose down to almost zero - I am sure there is any tribander yagi on
my QRG (which I cannot here due to death zone), and this station is 20db
stronger than me in DX...
So keep going with search and pounce...
Then at 18:00Z I started 40m. this band is always a problem for me, as I need to
completly change the antenna design - have to go outside and re-configure the
feed-circuitry for the 26m end-fed wire.... it needs at least 15 min of work,
time in constantly tropical rain going down for hours and hours... (I cannot
imagine being on Dx-pedition with such weather in fielddaty condx...)
So I had one chance for 40m to catch as much multi's as possible, because I
ddidn't want to re-configure the feed match over adn over again, for band
switch.
I hoosed the beginning of the evening - high activity, first on the good QRG's
and then keep defending it in the very small bandpart for RTTY...
I stayed there on 40m until 21:30Z - late local evening - 36 multi's got !
imagine: worked later another 3 multi;s on 40m with the 80m config matching it
with the build in tuner of FT-1000MP after 50m of coax. AA5AU was still strong,
but unbelievable he really heard me at sunrise time... I was working with my 80m
and on 40m... giving me about 10dB loss at least !!!

Anyway after having done 40m, I was afraid, that it was too late to catch enough
stations on 80m, as after midnight activity goes down here in EU, very much...
Luckyly I could pick up a lot of stations in the first hour, and also my
L-antenna (26m) showed it's performance.... This time I am NO 'rare
PA-stn'...just ordinary 1979 licence class....
So I realized - i didn't make sense to call long time on the qrg by myself...
Usually I did it only to survive physically as more and more I got exhausted
from constantly hunting with search and pounce...

During the night especially between 2h and 4h UTC, the rate went down very much
(about 10qso/h... terrible) In this phase of the contest a quick bandchange to
40m and back to 20/80 would have helped a lot...
In fact I could work only 80m and 20m whole night - no way to be on 40m without
the hassle of changing the feed network...
Happy when my new matchbox is ready (motorized for remote control fron the
shack...)

Womeone from USA called me at EU-sunrise on 80m - (Was it you DON, AA5AU ?!).
But due to the tremndous rain and showers with local thunderstorm, (I heard is
rolling almost whole night !) real DX work on 80m stayed an illusion...the band
was empty !

Then 20m morning was really fine. several pacific worked (ZL / VK, althoough
this contest is really no DX-contest)
Checked 15m, my difficult band (the L-antenna is not very efficient and
competitive!) 
But: THE highlight was KH6ND on 15m at about 6:00Z - great, to be through really
at the first try !!! Many many stations where calling but I obviously was lucky
to catch just the condx I  needed to work him...

then another coffee and the biggest problem of exhaustion was under control...
The condx improved generally the whole sunday amd it was great. unfortunately
almost no EU on 15m to work on short skip or backscatter... it is just
impossible with LP-100wtts and a simple antenna...

Nice "competition" with young UZ7HO - he is 19years old(nice 2000 multi..hi), We
compared over and over again our scores - it is interesting, as he has similar
simple station than me... I kept ahead with 10 to 20 qso's until sunday morning,
when he got a nice run on 15m to central EU...
It;s his advantage of haveing some distance to hear al EU...

So kept really going with search and pounce. I had all the time the idea, that
my multi result was great - I thought on sunday morning that more than 49
multi's on 20m would be impossible....
Then suddenly: W3KV on 20m... I immediately realized - it must be an OOOLLLDDD
licence... 1934... incredible !!!
Dear ham friend, I wish I am able to run contests in 50years from now on... (nut
my age is already 43years - Anyway: Congratulations ! For me you are the real
winner of this weekend, W3KV... 
RW9C gave 1928 exchange, but I believe this is a clubstation and it was just
found in early early days.....
Anyone knows about the history of RW9C ?! (licenced in 1928 !)

So, really glad to got so much fun this weekend. I wonder what is the final
result of my young friend UZ7HO - I fear I lost the competition...hi

Greetings to all who have called me !

Ulli, PA5AT
(member of PI4COM contest team)


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