[3830] CQWW CW N7MH(@W6YX) M/2 HP

[n7mh at arrl.net]

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: N7MH
Operator(s): N7MH,WX5S,AD6FX
Station: W6YX

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: Stanford, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 46

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:   80    20       40
   40:  602    33      107
   20:  227    34       93
   15:  454    34      115
   10:  261    32       70
------------------------------
Total: 1624   153      425  Total Score = 2,611,404

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

Our usual W6YX operators were burned out from all the other contests over the
past couple of months starting with CQP.  So we decided to do a casual effort,
with whatever crew was able to show up.  Scotty, W7SW, wanted to use his own
callsign and operate casually, so he occupied one radio when he was around.  We
set up two other radios for our club effort and put my callsign on the air for
the first time in 25 years.  I hope that didn't cause too much of a Super Check
Partial crisis for everyone's logging software.

This was a meager M/2 effort, but we wanted the freedom of being able to fully
use our 2 radios when we had 2 operators available.  We only had 13 hours with 2
operators, for a total of 59 operator-hours.

I got a late start at 0008Z on 15 meters and decided to S&P since a CQ frequency
was hard to find that late.  I soon began CQ'ing and later swapped bands with
W7SW, moving to 10 at 0130Z.  Since Scotty was on 15, I next moved down to 20
which was open to almost everywhere except Europe.  The only European stations I
heard were a few Russians and OH stations.  After a good JA run on 20 I moved to
40 to catch the European multipliers there.  There were a lot of workable
European stations on 40, so I stayed there for a while.  By the time I went back
to 20 it was dead except for HC8N and a few other South American stations.  So,
virtually no Europe on 20 that first evening when we're used to great evening
openings in recent years.

This is the first contest I recall getting more than 100 countries on 40 meters.
 We spent a lot of time there since the higher bands weren't open at night.  We
worked several African stations on 80 but only one station in a European zone,
CU/DJ9RR, during the evening.  Several Europeans were worked during the 80-meter
long-path opening on Sunday at sunrise.

We got to 20 late both mornings because 80 and 40 were so good, so we missed
many easy multipliers on 20.  Splitting bands with the W7SW effort also meant we
only had a handful of Europeans on Saturday morning on 15.  I arrived late in
the morning and shared 15 meters with W7SW, using a PRO67A pointing east. 
Amazingly, neither station could tell when the other was transmitting.  I was
also surprised that I could easily work most Europeans even though my antenna
was pointed about 60 degrees south of the direct path.  By the time I got to 10
meters the band was no longer open to Europe, but I did manage to work H2G in
zone 20.

On Sunday morning I noticed that all the Europeans I heard on 15 were loud but
virtually uncopiable because of the auroral flutter, or so I thought.  Stations
were having a hard time copying me also, even though I presume my signal was
also strong.  When I switched to the fixed 155CA pointed east, I could copy the
callsigns so I began using that antenna even though stations were much weaker. 
Matt, WX5S, was on 20 meters working into Europe.  He made a comment about long
path on 20 and that's when I realized that my main 15 meter antenna was on the
same mast and Matt had pointed our antennas in the long-path direction.  The
combination of long and short path signals resulted in what sounded like a
constant, lightly modulated, tone.  About 10 minutes later Matt started
complaining that the signals on 20 were so fluttery that they were uncopiable -
it turned out that propagation had shifted to short path on 20 and the same
thing had happened to him.  Switching to antennas pointed short path solved the
problem.

One odd thing that happened was that I heard 3C2MV weakly CQing around 14065 on
Saturday afternoon.  I tried calling but couldn't get a response and didn't hear
any other stations calling or a response to any other station.  I ended up
working 3C2MV at about the same time (2100Z) on Sunday in a huge pileup near
14012, working split.  It would have been nice to make the contact without the
pileup.

We never did work S07PM even though we spent time in the pileups on 15 and 20. 
Finally worked KH6 on 15 meters with 2 hours to go in the contest.  We spent a
long time in the pileup for 9S1X on 10 only to have W7SW get called by 9S1X in
the last hour of the contest.

Hope to work everyone in the ARRL 10 meter contest.

-Mike, N7MH


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