[3830] ARRLDX CW ZF2NT SOAB HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: ZF2NT
Operator(s): ZF2NT
Station: ZF2NT

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: LYB
Operating Time (hrs): 42

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  425    53
   80:  669    56
   40:  857    57
   20: 1348    59
   15: 1308    59
   10:  640    57
-------------------
Total: 5247   341  Total Score = 5,275,611

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

The biggest problem I had should be obvious from the numbers above:  10m just
did not blow my way.  I never got a decent 10m opening the whole weekend, and
when it did open it was mostly searchlight propagation.  First I worked every
ham in Minnesota, then caught the Dakotas and Nebraska, then Montana, and
finally west coast stations.  East coast stations were few and far between, and
never very strong.  (And unfortunately there are a few more of them than there
out in Montana and the Dakotas.)  Meanwhile, though, the Europeans had
bone-crushing signals here.  I wasted lots and lots of time checking for 10m
openings and fighting a losing battle trying to get through.  The bottom line is
that the Cayman Islands are just too close to the US at this point in the
sunspot cycle.  Once 10m is dead for everybody I'll probably be in good shape
again, but for now I can see that people in the eastern Caribbean can clean up
in this contest while I'm left in the dark.

The other problem was that I just simply stay awake.  There's a good reason I
went M/S in this thing the past couple of years.  I went straight through Friday
night and all day Saturday, but by about 12:30 a.m. Sunday morning I was nodding
off in the middle of QSOs.  I finally gave up and went to bed.  Big mistake. 
That was only 9:30 west coast time, and there were plenty of low band Qs to be
had.  The right strategy would have been to grab 90 minutes sleep, then go back
at it.  Instead, I took 6 hours.  So I lose.  But even if I'd hung in there the
whole night for another couple hundred Qs, that would have only yielded about
5.5M--a long way from Alex's 6.1M.  My hat is off to D4B for a super effort.

Dupes:  I started tracking my dupe rate about 3/4 of the way through the
contest.  I remember at that point I had 4500 Qs in the log, there were only 41
dupes.  My normal dupe rate is 1%-1.5%, so that felt good.  Sunday afternoon it
started skyrocketing, though.  In the end, there were 89 dupes, which are
included somewhere in the numbers above.  There was one guy I worked 3 times on
the same band, and I tried to tell him that...even down to 20 wpm.  He didn't
get it, though.  Dupes never do.  They're the ones who take forever to send
their call, want to wish me GL es best 73, repeat everything twice, etc.  

Mults:  Many thanks to all the people who moved for me.  I really appreciated
it, and well remember the calls.  It cost me a lot of time, and I know I was
overly conservative in moving mults.  But how was I to know there were going to
be lots of people on all bands from SD and NE?  It doesn't normally work that
way.  On the other hand, I will echo comments I have seen made by some others
objecting to people who called in the middle of a pile-up to ask for a move. 
Over and over I would have "TEN?" blasted at me while I was trying to copy some
weak signal.  Not very nice at all.  And yes, I do know some of the offenders.


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