[3830] ARRLDX CW K3ZO SOAB HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: K3ZO
Operator(s): K3ZO
Station: K3ZO

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: MD
Operating Time (hrs): 39.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   39    28
   80:  191    54
   40:  495    75
   20:  822    88
   15:  965    96
   10:  851    92
-------------------
Total: 3363   433  Total Score = 4,368,537

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

The first half of the contest was a delight!  I'm glad I began on 40 
and hit 80 and 160 fairly hard the first night.  The storm began as 
rain instead of snow and was light enough so that there was no precip 
static, but the humidity doused all the line noises.  I could hear 
everything!  

On Saturday night I had a good Asian run on 15 and then 20.  My new 
time-off schedule to account for advancing age now has me taking a 
solid five and a half hours off in the wee hours of Sunday morning.  
That way I'm fit to go the whole day Sunday in pretty good shape. It 
does mean that I miss the European sunrise opening on 40 the second 
day.

I quit at 0503 UTC Sunday with 2301 QSOs in the log and 
receiving conditions still quite good.  What a rude shock I got when I 
got back into the operating chair at 1030 UTC.  I had planned to work 
a few mults on 80 and 40 before heading off to the higher bands, but 
the whining snow static on the 40 meter Yagi meant that all I could 
hear were a few loud Caribbean stations, so after picking up 4 mults 
there I went off to 20.

Thank goodness for quads!  While my 20 and 15 meter Yagis were pretty 
much immobilized on receive, my 10, 15 and 20 meter 4-element quads 
were quiet except for a bit of reflected snow static from the Yagis.  
Fortunately when I beam Europe on the quads the Yagis are behind me!
It made for some interesting transmit/receive antenna operations on 
the FT-1000-MP.  For example on 15 most of the time I transmitted on 
the high 8-el Yagi and received on the lower 4-el quad.  All was fine 
until I decided to go to 40 at 2120 UTC to make up for some of the 
QSOs I had foregone by sleeping during the European sunrise opening.  
I found a good spot and started running and had a nice pile, but after 
only about five minutes the snow static had started up again.  I tried 
all my other antennas but only the 80 meter sloper could hear much and 
after picking out the loud ones like RW2F and RU1A I couldn't pull out 
any of the others so with apologies for the "snow QRN" I went to 10 
where there hadn't been much from Japan the first day so I figured 
there would be enough action there to keep me busy.  During the last 
half hour I went back to 40 and by that time almost all signals were 
loud enough to be heard on the 80 meter sloper.  I went up the band 
S&P and there were still enough stations not in my log to make an S&P 
excursion worthwhile, including JY9QJ for a new mult.

In addition to the enhanced ground conductivity on the low bands, 
there's another advantage to being down in a hole like I am.  The 
winds here were not so ferocious and all antennas and rotators 
performed flawlessly all through the contest.


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