[3830] ARRLDX CW WC1M SOAB HP
dick.green@valley.net
dick.green@valley.net
Sat, 23 Feb 2002 02:22:58 -0500 (EST)
ARRL DX Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s):
Station:
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 29
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
----------------------
160: 34 32
80: 232 53
40: 418 62
20: 831 67
15: 606 60
10: 627 69
----------------------
Total: 2748 343 = 2,824,605
Club: YCCC
Comments:
Antennas:
160M - trapped vee @65'
80M - delta loop @75', trapped vee @65'
40M - full-size 4-square w/260 radials
20M - 4-el 30' boom @70', C3E @50'
15M - 5-el 24' boom @50', C3E @50'
10M - C3E @50'
580' NE beverage
All yagis on separate tubular towers
Equipment:
FT-1000D + Alpha 87A, FT-1000MP + Acom 2000A, Writelog, TopTen band decoders
and switches.
I guess this contest wasn't meant to be. A couple of years ago, my wife decided
that we were going to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. It was
probably a year ago when I realized this meant I would miss the 2002 ARRL DX CW
contest. I came to terms with that, but not happily. As the Olympics drew near,
I got less and less enthusiastic about going -- for other reasons. I love the
Olympics, on TV, but I hate crowd scenes. I knew it wouldn't be my cup of tea,
so I suggested that my wife go by herself and I would stay home and take care
of our five-year old daughter (who, I thought, wouldn't get much out of the
Olympic scene.) I knew being Mr. Mom would also eliminate any chance of a
serious effort in the contest, but figured I could get on for a few hours here
and there during play dates and after bedtime. You can imagine how thrilled I
was when my wife announced that she wanted to go for the second week so she
could be there during her beloved ladies figure skating competition (not that
she had tickets or anything -- she expected to watch it on TV in Salt Lake!)
Anyway, I would get to do an all-out effort in ARRL DX CW! Or so I thought...
My work life has been a little less stressful this winter and I was able to get
plenty of sleep in the weeks leading up to the contest. I got lots of good CW
practice by doing limited stints in the CQ 160M, NAQP and NA Sprint contests
(highly recommended for brushing up the old QRQ.) The station didn't need any
work, though I decided to order a couple of Dunestar bandpass filters to deal
with interference that the bandpass stubs can't handle. It seems that when I
swapped the TH-7 for a pair of monobanders on 20M and 15M (on separate towers),
the C3E started picking up interference between 10M and 20M (wierd, but true.)
I ordered the filters late and was told they "might" make it by the contest.
Going into the week before the contest, I was a little late working out a band
plan and identifying goals, and I hadn't picked up any food for the weekend.
The big trouble started on Monday. I'm on the board of a non-profit that
encountered a fundraising shortfall early in the year. The bad money situation,
which under normal circumstances could be addressed, suddenly led to nasty
recriminations between various individuals on the staff and board, and this in
turn snowballed into resignation of most of the officers and all the
fundraisers. Practically overnight we had a whopping projected deficit. The
whole thing mushroomed in a couple of weeks to the point where it's likely to
end in Chapter 7. This situation, especially the nasty interpersonal stuff,
caused my stress level to skyrocket by Tuesday. Things got even worse
Wednesday. By Thursday I was emotionally drained and physically tired from all
the phone calls, meetings and worry. I decided to put as much of the situation
out of my mind as possible and focus on getting ready for the contest. And that
was when things got *really* bad...
The long and the short of it is that I came down with a whopping case of the
stomach flu Thursday night. As I'm sure everyone knows, few minor illnesses are
worse than this one, especially going into a major contest! After bailing out
on a Valentine's Day dinner date with my wife, I spent some serious time in the
bathroom. Do you know the expression "driving the porcelain bus"? That was me.
Sittin' on it, too -- sick at both ends. It was misery.
I slept virtually all day Friday. By 4 o'clock or so I was feeling well enough
to get out of bed, but couldn't even think about eating. Didn't matter, as I
hadn't bought any food for the contest. I checked the front porch and there
were the Dunestar filters. I made the mistake of trying to wire one of them up
(required mods to one of the decoder boxes.) Not only did this make me feel
worse, but it took long enough that I ended up starting the contest 15 minutes
late. The single filter didn't add much value during the contest, so it was a
dumb thing to do.
With the late start and feeling sick, the first hour was pretty bad -- only 67
Qs, all on 40M. Things got better in the second hour, with the QSO total rising
to 101 -- again mostly 40M. The next five hours were miserable as I struggled
to keep from puking on the keyboard. The only highlight was working quite a few
mults on 160M and 80M. I was able to run and I was able to S&P, but there was
no way I could use the second radio -- it took too much mental energy for the
state I was in. That's the way it was through the rest of the contest, which
totally killed mult production.
I probably would have quit after the first few hours, but late in the 0500z
hour the 20M sunrise opening to Europe began -- and what an opening it was! I
ran almost 350 contacts in a little over three hours. The rate meter was
hopping and low power JA stations were pounding in along with the Europeans.
I've only been at this seriously for a few years, but I've *never* heard JAs at
that hour, not to mention as loud as the Europeans. Wow! With propagation that
good, I couldn't stop no matter how sick I felt.
After a brief lull during the 0900z hour, 20M opened up again with a vengeance
during the 1000z hour and I worked 136 stations. 15M opened strong around 1130z
and I ran a quick 150 QSOs in one hour. 10M took off at 1230z and I ran 450
QSOs in 3.5 hours. 15M and 10M overlapped in the 1200z hour, and that was where
my hourly peak occurred -- 160 QSOs, a personal best. I'm pretty sure the peak
hourly rate was higher, but the contest software doesn't tell me that -- it
only shows the total for each clock hour. It sure was fun to push the 10-minute
rate meter up to and over 200! With that kind of fun, it was more or less easy
to overlook being sick to my stomach.
After the 10M opening, I ran another 319 QSOs in three hours on 15M, then
nearly 200 more on 20M in two and a half hours. By this time the sickness was
catching up to me again and I was feeling really awful. I did my best to run
stations on 40M, but managed less than 200 over the next three hours. I still
couldn't use the second radio at all. I ran on 80M for an hour and a half or
so, and at 0400z finally decided that I had to lie down. I had intended to
sleep for one hour, but my body insisted on stretching that into over five
hours. When I woke up, dazed and still quite sick, I knew there was no chance
for the top ten (I pretty much knew that a lot earlier in the contest, when I
was running more than 50 mults behind last year -- but the rate was incredible
and I was still hoping.) I was bummed about missing the second EU sunrise
opening.
I probably should have gone back to bed right there, but I couldn't bring
myself to miss the morning runs (uh... no pun intended.) 20M opened as usual at
1000z, but not as strong. I ran 15M and then 10M, doing in the high 90s per
hour. The rate was decent, but by the end of the 1300z hour, I was flat out
finished. My stomach felt like a bowling ball, my head was splitting, and I
just couldn't make one more QSO. I shut off the radios and went to bed for the
rest of the day. Fini.
Writelog says I did 29 hours, but it wasn't that much. I took a lot of small
breaks and some longer ones that don't show up in the offtime report. What's
amazing is that even at 29 hours the average was 95 per hour. I'm sure it was
well over 100 per hour for the actual amount of operating time. That's far and
away the most I've averaged in any contest. It's true that the average would
probably be lower had I worked the slow hours the second night and the second
afternoon. Still, the propagation was absolutely astounding at times, which
explains why I pushed my sick body to keep going -- conditions like that just
don't come along very often and my puny antennas can be very competitive when
they do. "I coulda' been a contenda'!"
I saw somewhere that KI1G got the stomach flu, too, and had to quit after 28
hours. But he had somthing like 3300+ QSOs and over 4M points! How does he do
it? Very humbling.
It was probably foolish to do the contest at all, as it lengthened the illness.
I was sick for several days after the contest, unable to eat normally until
Thursday. Worst stomach flu I've ever had.
Besides the incredible conditions, highlight of the contest was YA5T calling me
on two bands. Needed that one badly for #329.
Congrats to all the fine ops who participated this year. W4PA did an incredible
job, as did many others. Congrats especially to W1WEF, who said he would kick
my butt and KR1G's and proceeded to do just that.
After my lousy showing in CQWW, I guess this year was not meant to be. Still,
there's WPX and IARU...
73, Dick WC1M
QSO/DX by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm
D1-0000Z --+-- --+-- 67/25 --+-- --+-- --+-- 67/25 67/25
D1-0100Z - 7/5 89/7 - 5/3 - 101/15 168/40
D1-0200Z 10/9 28/10 - - - - 38/19 206/59
D1-0300Z 7/7 27/5 1/0 - 5/2 - 40/14 246/73
D1-0400Z 8/8 35/10 - - 1/0 - 44/18 290/91
D1-0500Z 2/1 26/6 3/0 19/8 - - 50/15 340/106
D1-0600Z - - - 120/16 - - 120/16 460/122
D1-0700Z - - - 126/9 - - 126/9 586/131
D1-0800Z --+-- --+-- 8/7 81/3 --+-- --+-- 89/10 675/141
D1-0900Z - 7/5 15/9 22/0 - - 44/14 719/155
D1-1000Z - - - 136/4 - - 136/4 855/159
D1-1100Z - - - 17/0 67/24 - 84/24 939/183
D1-1200Z - - - - 83/9 77/29 160/38 1099/221
D1-1300Z - - - - - 125/8 125/8 1224/229
D1-1400Z - - - - 1/1 131/5 132/6 1356/235
D1-1500Z - - - - - 117/6 117/6 1473/241
D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 116/4 --+-- 116/4 1589/245
D1-1700Z - - - - 98/4 1/1 99/5 1688/250
D1-1800Z - - - - 105/5 5/5 110/10 1798/260
D1-1900Z - - - 65/4 4/2 9/9 78/15 1876/275
D1-2000Z - - - 104/5 1/0 - 105/5 1981/280
D1-2100Z - - - 24/0 - - 24/0 2005/280
D1-2200Z - - 64/5 - - 1/1 65/6 2070/286
D1-2300Z - - 83/3 - - 2/2 85/5 2155/291
D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- 64/3 2/0 4/4 --+-- 70/7 2225/298
D2-0100Z 5/5 12/3 22/1 2/2 - - 41/11 2266/309
D2-0200Z - 72/4 - 7/6 - - 79/10 2345/319
D2-0300Z 1/1 12/0 - 7/7 - - 20/8 2365/327
D2-0400Z - - - - - - 0/0 2365/327
D2-0500Z - - - - - - 0/0 2365/327
D2-0600Z - - - - - - 0/0 2365/327
D2-0700Z - - - - - - 0/0 2365/327
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 2365/327
D2-0900Z - 3/3 2/2 11/1 - - 16/6 2381/333
D2-1000Z 1/1 3/2 - 73/1 - - 77/4 2458/337
D2-1100Z - - - 15/1 83/2 - 98/3 2556/340
D2-1200Z - - - - 33/0 64/2 97/2 2653/342
D2-1300Z - - - - - 95/1 95/1 2748/343
Total: 34/32 232/53 418/62 831/67 606/60 627/69
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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