[3830] IARU - AD5Q SO CW HP

[R.S.Hradilek]

Hours of Operation: 21:08

         CW      CW    band
band   QSOs     pts   mults
                           
160      12      24      6
 80      84     210     18
 40     367    1187     45
 20     506    1562     60
 15     235     655     33
 10      75     187      7
                           
TOTAL  1279    3825    169  SCORE: 646,425

Comments...

I almost threw in the towel on this one, but know from past 
experiences that those who endure poor conditions are rewarded 
with a higher ranking in the results - due to the others that drop 
out early. It gives us losers with tri-bander stations west of the 
Mississippi a chance to make the Top-10.

I checked the WWV numbers just before the contest and the K-
Index was 6 - really bad. I expected that the contest would be 
mostly a stateside event, but did not expect the rates to be so good 
for the first several hours. It couldn't last, and didn't. I took a 20 
minute nap, tried the bands, then took another break. The EU's had 
moved to 20, and only Zone 8 can run them in the daytime.

Conditions on 15 came back strong in the later afternoon, and I 
picked up some of the HQ station mults with big signals from 
Europe. The rest of the EU's weren't there. I should have been able 
to run them easily, but they were on 20 handing out Q's to the 
needy zone 8's.

I thought conditions on 40 were great, or at least I did better than 
usual. I had trouble working the EU mults on 80 (but JA was easy), 
and activity was very light on 160. In this contest, I can usually run 
EU's for hours at night on 20, but this year I hardly made a dent 
in them. I missed most of the russian zones, and missed JA on 15.

With the persistant coronal hole on the sun, the K-Index is rarely 
under 2. This is going to impair contest conditions for at least a few 
more months - and then there is the sunspot bottom. 


Station...

Force-12 C4XL @ 104 ft (rotates)
KLM KT34XA @ 50 ft (fixed NE)
5 el 10M Mono @ 70 ft (fixed NE)
80M 4 wire sloper
160M wire vertical
K9AY receiving array
FT-890 & FT900 (compact SO2R)
Alpha 76PA & Ameritron AL-1500
NA Software

Roy -- AD5Q
Houston Tx
http://qth.com/ad5q