[3830] CQWW CW VE7ASK SOAB LP

[ve7ask at rac.ca]

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: VE7ASK
Operator(s): VE7ASK
Station: VE7ASK

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): abt 30

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   12               
   80:  105               
   40:  156               
   20:  109               
   15:  177               
   10:  116               
------------------------------
Total:  675   147       63  Total Score = 313,740

Club: 

Comments:

Another great contest weekend in the books. The final tally of 675 QSOs is 300
more than my previous CW best-effort, and 277 better than my all-time best
contest result (CQWW RTTY 2002) so I'm a very happy OM.

Got started late, slept a few hours both nights, and missed a few hours Saturday
morning working on antennas. Total operating time, about 30 hours.

After ducking out of work an hour early Friday afternoon, I drove an hour to
arrive 00:10Z Saturday at the "contest" QTH, where the Expanded Lazy-H and G5RV
antennas were already strung about 70 feet up in the pines. 

The Lazy-H was OK, but my small outboard tuner wasn't up to the matching
challenge. That left me with no safe way to match the 300-ohm twinlead to the
FT920. It was G5RV-only almost right from the start.

Scrambling to set up quickly, I discovered that the coax I'd brought with me
from home was too short to reach the bottom of the G5RV's twinlead feeder. Had
to lower the middle of the antenna, and while the feedpoint was still 35 feet
up, I could sure tell the difference. In the freezing dark, I added a 20-foot
length of twinlead. Ran inside to warm up and try the antenna. SWR all over the
place, as I suspected it would be. I ripped out the splice, and used the low
(now V-shaped) antenna all Friday night, with limited results. 

Saturday morning, I found a 30-foot length of coax (bulk, unlabelled, probably
something I scavenged from a cable company years ago) in my junkbox. Thinking it
"looked" like RG58U, and using the ham's unflagging "can't hurt to try"
attitude, I added it to the antenna feedline. Ran inside to see how it played,
but found signals greatly attenuated. They were there, but soft and "distant."
Either a solar flare had struck or I was dealing with a dummy load. I think we
all know the sun wasn't to blame. 

Back to the drawing board. If you can't just add random lengths of 300-ohm
twinlead to a G5RV, you can scale up the entire antenna to get a longer
feedline. "Hey," I thought to myself, "a double-sized G5RV uses 57 feet of
twinlead -- that would be long enough to reach the too-short coax." 

So, a whole new antenna was the solution, (after only two hours' sleep anyway).
So be it. I grabbed a bunch of #14 speaker wire I had fortunately thrown into
the truck on Thursday night, and measured two 102-foot lengths, cut a 57-foot
piece of TV twinlead, and rigged up a double-sized G5RV. That's 204 feet of
radio enjoyment, if I could get it up to, say, 70 or 80 feet. Lucky for me, I
already had ropes that high in the pine trees and so I raised the new antenna in
place of the old 102-foot G5RV. With an extra 51 feet of wire on each side, I
had to pull the "tails" of each side through the trees and away to the farthest,
highest points I could find. Ran inside to warm up and try it. It worked FB. 

Time lost to build and hoist a new antenna: 2 hours or so. Probably would have
made more contacts and more points just using the old low wire for those two
lost hours, but I felt better anyway.

Worked a few on top band Saturday night, first time with a 160m-friendly antenna
but not a lot of activity there. 40m surprised me, as did 80m -- over 100 Qs on
each. Noticed conditions fell off at about 10:30 a.m. local Sunday, but came
back over the next hour. Wasn't able to work everyone I heard (EA8 and others,
thanks for trying), but enjoyed a nice run to the finish.

I went into the contest shooting for 500 QSOs, and passed that at 12z Sunday
when I headed off for some sleep. Added another 175 during the day Sunday. 

I also had hoped to make 100 QSOs on the three high bands, but ended up pushing
through 100 on five bands, which makes me very happy. Even had a handful of
6-banders, and HC8N on five.

Didn't get a great heap of countries, but worked lots of new ones -- mostly in
the Caribbean and South America. At one point, I worked the Caribbean islands
from south to north like a string of pearls stretched out across 40M. Not many
JA stations around compared to other contests (I was looking forward to dawn
openings to Japan but didn't see them). Hardly any VK/ZL stations heard. ZL1GO
and the Quartz Hill lads were active, and I heard VK4EMM, VK4UC and one or two
others, but that was all.

Used GenLog (vers. 6, 32-bit) and it worked great for logging and scoring. The
Celeron 450 computer gave me fits on CW though -- GenLog does OK on my P200 at
home, but on the Celeron machine the CW timing was a bit flakey (not the
software's fault!). My apologies to those who had to suffer my computer "fist"
and even greater apologies to those who suffered through my iambic keying, hi.


This contesting game gets more interesting each time out, and I am learning
loads of things about technique, the gear, the ionosphere, and me.

Thanks to everyone for the contacts and near-contacts, and to the sponsors and
organizers for this gigantic contest.

See you in 2003,

73,

Bud, VE7ASK


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