[3830] NAQP SSB NK7U M/2 LP
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Sun Jan 18 16:03:31 EST 2004
North American QSO Party, SSB
Call: NK7U
Operator(s): NK7U, K7ZO, KW7J
Station: NK7U
Class: M/2 LP
QTH: Oregon
Operating Time (hrs): 12
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 54 20
80: 361 52
40: 432 52
20: 502 53
15: 669 54
10: 589 44
-------------------
Total: 2607 275 Total Score = 716,925
Club:
Team:
Comments:
Well, that was an amazing contest! NK7U, KW7J, and I rank this one up at one of
the top contests ever from NK7U in terms of shear fun and enjoyment.
Congrats to the W6YX team for what looks like the winning M/2 score and from
what I can tell the 3rd best NAQP SSB M/2 score ever recorded. I think we might
be second with the 4th best score ever, and we may hold the all time QSO record.
I agree with K6LL’s comments about this being two contests with the east and
west coast being “upside down” with each other. The west coast had the advantage
on 10 and 15, the east coast on 80 and 160. This time around it looks like the
overall advantage went to the west.
Here is our story.
We really didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary when we sat down at the
rigs a couple minutes before the contest. K7ZO was a bit late on his drive over
from Boise because of black ice on the roads so setup was finished right before
the contest started. KW7J opened on 15M and K7ZO on 10M. The thought on opening
on 10M was “To see if we could make a few Q’s and grab a few mults in case the
band was open”. We really had not had time to scan the bands to see what shape
they were in. As it turned out they were in great shape and we immediately had
roaring pileups going on each band. KW7J and K7ZO were like a couple of
sprinters accelerating out of the blocks as we banged QSO’s into the log. As the
end of the first hour drew near they were still within a QSO or two of each
other with the lead jockeying back and forth. Right before the hour K7ZO pulled
away and ended up with a 205 hour on 10M. KW7J had a 199 hour for a combined
total of 404 for us in the first hour. This is the highest hour we have ever had
in any contest at NK7U, including a few M/M operations in ARRL and CQWW.
Things inevitably slowed down in the second hour but it was still a 295 total.
In all we had 7 hours over 200 and averaged 217/hr for the whole contest.
10M stayed open for us well into the 2200 hour. At one point in the 10M
adventures, K7ZO had a helpful station drop by and ask what the frequency
readout on the radio was showing. I dutifully said “28468”. The other station
replied back that I was “out of band”. This confused me a bit and I offered a
suggestion back that maybe the other station, who didn’t ID, was confusing 10M
with 15M where the upper end of the band was 21450. There was a bit of a
sheepish “oh yea” that came back over the airways. If you are going to police
the airways make sure you know the laws.
As the contest wore on the key, as always, is planning the transitions to 40 and
80M. We went to 40M maybe a bit too soon but had hoped to grab a frequency
before things got totally crazy. We weren’t that successful and struggled for
quite a time before finding a frequency. In general 40M seemed worse that usual.
There were very high levels of QRN coupled with the usual noise from the hordes.
We did find a few open spots and managed to end up doing quite well. The move to
80M is always the hardest for us, even with Joe’s 3 element beam. We always seem
to try to make the move too soon and end up beating our head against the wall.
We made a short move around 2:00 but just could not get the attention of the
Midwest and east coast. Then, at 3:05 Joe found 3838 open, settled in and was
off to the races. Just after he got going K7ZO came back from dinner and NK7U
offered him the seat while he chowed down. Joe’s parting words were something to
the effect of “don’t lose this frequency or you are dead”. K7ZO took that to
heart, but really didn’t have any problems. When he put on the headphones it was
like having QSO’s pouring from the skies. During the 26 minutes NK7U was gone
for dinner he worked 82 QSO’s for a 189/hour rate. Just like shooting fish in a
barrel. When NK7U returned and took over he had two consecutive 30 minute
periods of 77 Q’s each for a very respectable rate. During the 0300 hour we had
154Q's on 80M our 4th best band/hour.
160M was very hard for us as our antenna is the weakest of any band – just a
simple elevated ground plane. In addition we have the west coast challenge that
stations and mults are spread out way more than in the eastern half of the
country. (For instance K9NS worked 315/54 on 160M versus our 54/20. They had as
many mults as we did QSO’s) Still we felt lucky to work the 20 mults we did with
a couple going into the log in the last 5 minutes to move us solidly above the
700K point mark.
If you look at our score compared to W6YX they beat us because of more mults on
10, 15, and 20M. Based on their posting in particular they had more DX mults
than us. We didn’t even hear ZF, XE, or J3 for instance.
160 80 40 20 15 10
NK7U Q’s 54 361 432 502 669 589 2,607
M’s 20 52 52 53 54 44 275
W6YX Q’s 52 274 355 587 712 575 2,555
M’s 14 48 55 59 60 55 291
Thanks to everyone for the Q’s and especially those who accepted our requests to
QSY to another band. Our log shows four stations we had QSOs with on all 6
bands: K9SD, K9ZO, W4NZ, and WB4QDX. Thanks guys. We also had QSO’s on 5 bands
with 43 other stations. Out of the 1545 different calls in our log these 5 and 6
banders represented 3.2% of the callsigns but 9.2% of our QSO’s.
See us on the web at WWW.NK7U.COM
Scott/K7ZO
=================================
QSO/MUL by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm
1800Z - - - - 199/40 205/36 404/76 404/76
1900Z - - - - 140/5 155/3 295/8 699/84
2000Z - - - - 109/3 141/2 250/5 949/89
2100Z - - - 103/39 110/4 3/0 216/43 1165/132
2200Z - - - 35/4 84/2 85/3 204/9 1369/141
2300Z - - 6/5 135/7 27/0 - 168/12 1537/153
0000Z --+-- --+-- 88/27 134/1 --+-- --+-- 222/28 1759/181
0100Z - - 92/10 94/2 - - 186/12 1945/193
0200Z - 22/13 98/7 1/0 - - 121/20 2066/213
0300Z - 154/32 116/1 - - - 270/33 2336/246
0400Z 37/18 136/6 6/1 - - - 179/25 2515/271
0500Z 17/2 49/1 26/1 - - - 92/4 2607/275
Total: 54/20 361/52 432/52 502/53 669/54 589/44
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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