[3830] CQWW SSB N5DO SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: N5DO
Operator(s): N5DO
Station: N5DO

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 33

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    1     1        1
   80:   17    10       11
   40:   92    19       45
   20:  166    23       71
   15:  360    27       97
   10:  426    28       89
------------------------------
Total: 1062   108      314  Total Score = 1,203,122

Club: 

Comments:

My first time trying this contest as a high power entrant.  My friend K5FD is
attempting to put together a semi-competitive contest station and has challenged
me to our own personal contest.  We had agreed on the NAQP SSB test, but he was
not able to get everything together by then.  So we decided to make the first 6
hours of this contest be the event for our duel, and he picked high power as the
weapon of choice.  I never heard him until about 3 hours into the contest -- I
asked him how he was doing and he said that he had made 11 contacts!  Apparently
Murphy struck at the beginning of the contest and he fried his amplifier on 15M
due to a bad piece of coax.  It took him several hours to discover the cause of
the problem and get it fixed.  So we will try again some other day.

But by that time I was stuck in the hp category.  I operated it much like I do 
a low power contest, with lots of S & P.  Whenever I tried to get a run going I
was not very successful, with more US stations calling than DX.  Finally the
last hour I was able to establish a run on 10M into asia.  I kept thinking this
might be my last chance for several years to have a run on 10M with the
downslide of the sunspot cycle.  From all the pre-contest hype on TV about
impending disaster due to solar activity I was glad the bands were open at
all!

The most amazing part of the contest was the weather outside -- Friday it was 85
degrees and bright sunshine, Saturday was typical west Texas mountains fall
weather (about 70 degrees and sunshine), but Sunday morning when I looked
outside we were in the middle of a snow storm that lasted until noon.  About 3
inches of wet snow -- certainly a surprise here!

The most surprising moment on the bands was around noon on Sunday.  I went down
to 20M to see what was happening there.  I heard a small-sized pileup and
determined that it was 4W2A.  As I was swinging the beam around to the west I
gave him a call, and he came back the first time!  (One problem with me in DX
contests is that I tend to do too much DX'ing, and spend too much time trying to
work a rare one rather than focusing on rate!)

All-in-all a fun weekend.


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