[3830] ARRLCW - AD5Q SOAB HP
R.S.Hradilek
ids@nol.net
Sat, 23 Feb 2002 02:34:02 -0600
Hours of Operation: 41:07
band QSOs points mults
160 17 51 14
80 101 303 52
40 270 810 66
20 917 2751 82
15 403 1209 85
10 723 2169 81
TOTAL 2431 7293 380 SCORE: 2,771,340
From a propagation standpoint, the main difference between this
contest and the CQWW at the sunspot peak is 20 Meters.
Nighttime MUF's are higher in mid February than at the end of
November, and 20 Meter conditions are awesome. In the CQWW,
20 stays marginally open and signals are weak and watery -
usually not runnable (exception: CQWW CW 1989).
My main antenna is a Force-12 C4XL at 104 ft, and it is my only
beam that rotates. I like this antenna on most bands, but there are
some things I can't do from here - like run EU's on 40. I wonder if
anyone is having any luck with this antenna (or the C3) on 10
Meters. I am very disappointed with it on this band, and this year
couldn't manage any 10 Meter JA's runs at all. Since the EU runs
on 10 are so critically important, I needed something better and
built a 5 element optimized monobander on a 29 ft boom. It is fixed
on EU at 70 feet, and consistently beats the higher Force-12 by 3
to 6 full S-Units. I rely on it a lot for morning runs, and generally
don't try to run on 15 until my rates finally drop on 10 in the early
afternoon. On both days, this was also too late in the day to find
good rate on 15. Thus, most of my daytime Q's on 15 were with the
2nd radio and S&P. I worked it hard.
I knew in advance that my run band at night would be 20, and hit
the low bands hard with the 2nd radio - especially the first night.
On the 2nd night I caught the tail end of the JA run on 15, and
picked up several good Asian polar mults. This was my only run on
15 with good rate. I'm sure there were other good openings on 15 at
night, but I missed them because I favored the low bands which
were in good shape. Thus, I had high Qso totals on only two bands
- 10 by day (EU only) and 20 by night (breathtaking). Weird?
The first night, I kept finding mults on 80 and stayed there. The 2nd
night, however, almost everything I heard was already in the log
from the 1st night. UA6LV on the 2nd night was the loudest
european russian I've ever heard on 80 - and a tough path from
here. He was also the only station on 80 that had trouble hearing
me.
After midnight on the 2nd night I left 80 & 160 mostly alone and hit
40 harder - but couldn't get the mult totals up. Rather than try to
run JA's on 40 all morning, I found 20 to be a bottomless pit (both
nights). I did finally get a JA run on 40 going during and after
Sunday sunrise, where EY8MM called in long path with a very big
KW sig. I stayed on 40 long enough to make a complete 2nd radio
pass accross 10 before beginning my run there (good mults).
Around noon on Sunday everything went flat. Noise levels picked
up slightly, and though there were still many loud signals on both
10 & 15, they weren't the ones that answered my runs. I took some
off time and S&P'ed both bands relentlessly, finally running slowly
on 20 for the last hour of the contest.
I finished the contest with 2400+ Q's in the log, which from this
mostly tri-bander station is a new all time high for any contest.
There are too many big stations here in South Texas for me to even
think about taking the section anymore. I used to do this in the last
sunspot peak with just a KT34XA (now fixed EU at 50 ft), some
delta loops, and homebrew software (manually sending all CW with
a paddle - not even a CQ memory). Since re-engineering my
station for SO2R a few years ago, my abilities in this mode have
improved steadily. Since I am a programmer, I also see further
improvements possible in contest software that nobody has done
yet. When the day comes that NA is no longer upgraded or
supported, I intend to ask for the source code and take SO2R to
the next level. Stay tuned.
Roy -- AD5Q
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