[3830] ARRL 10 W5ZL SO Mixed LP

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                    ARRL 10-Meter Contest

Call: W5ZL
Operator(s): W5ZL
Station: W5ZL

Class: SO Mixed LP
QTH: STX
Operating Time (hrs): 18

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  639    82
  SSB:  225    79
-------------------
Total:  864   161  Total Score = 476,238

Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club

Comments:

Strange conditions, but presumably "normal" for this point in the cycle. For all
practical purposes it looked at the starting gun like Friday night was going to
be a throw-away, but by the time I had worked through most of the CTDXCC guys
the band opened nicely to ZL and VK and stayed open remarkably late into the
night. I'm still mending from the back injury I sustained exactly a month ago
and don't yet have the stamina (or intestinal fortitude) to work the
all-nighters, so I went to bed around 12:30 am local and got up fresh for
another go at it Saturday morning to be rewarded with some very nice runs
(mostly CW). After a long break for the afternoon and an evening Xmas party I
got back on for a short time Sat. night, but conditions were not nearly as good
as the night before. Sunday was spent mostly plodding along looking for mults
both modes. EU almost non-existent and didn't work a single JA the whole
weekend. On the multiplier front, I managed to miss a number of normally
embarrassingly EASY states (MO, NE, KS, ND, AR, MS and OK) on SSB. By the time I
realized how bad a shape I was in the band had gone long Sunday afternoon!

On the bright side, I found sitting for a few hours at a time this weekend a lot
more tolerable physically than the week before (160 meter contest). In addition,
I reorganized the positions of the radio, keyer paddle and keyboard such that
the back brace was not such an impediment to the operation as before.

This is the first contest I've operated "in the modern era" (since getting back
on the air this year) where I really worked the spotting info hard. I can
attribute quite a few of the mults I ultimately did snag to paying close
attention to the cluster and responding quickly when I saw a hard target.


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