[3830] CQWW CW KT1V SOAB HP

Mon Nov 29 22:42:33 EST 2004

                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: KT1V
Operator(s): KT1V
Station: KT1V

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 44.667
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   56    11       34
   80:  419    21       72
   40:  662    27       90
   20:  849    33       99
   15:  625    26       91
   10:  145    24       70
------------------------------
Total: 2756   142      456  Total Score = 4,654,234

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:

I really wanted to do this writeup shortly after the contest while still
delirious from sleep deprivation, thinking it would be far more amusing to both
write and read, but I got distracted by a good bottle of Madeira and making some
fried rice  . . .

It was tough  conditions were far better than many of us are saying, but tough
nonetheless. Hey, 15m AND 10m opened BOTH days to EU! Maybe the cycle is already
on the upswing? I expect at least one CQWW where 10m is a distant thought, 15m
is primarily skew path to EU if at all, and the MUF is way below 40m most of the
night! I expect 80 and 160 to rock however!! And I will have fun too.

I S&Ped far more than usual. I quick look at recent past SOAB scores shows me
KBing on Qs but not mults. Mults still need work, but are better than before. I
musta asked 30 mults to QSY. The first was successful. Most guys either refused
for some reason, or just didn’t answer.

I had a sloooow start. I often have bad starts, but thought that I got over this
particular problem last year. I did 71 Qs the first hour on 40m, and I’m loud on
40. Changed run freq more than once, but it didn’t help. Glad to see it wasn’t
just me. 80 sucked too, and although 20 was opened late somewhere, it was really
just good for 2nd radio Qs to the South. 160 was cool around 0300 and worked
quite a few Europeans. Never heard much from the South on 160  figured they all
had noise.

I slept 40 minutes night one. This is unlike me. It was a good idea! It was just
so slow that sleeping made sense, and I was refreshed for the morning runs. Even
managed two 152Q hours back to back at 1200 and 1300z on 15. I kept thinking I
should goto 10m, but rate was too good. I finally went for a while around 1400z,
and rate of course suffered, but I needed the 10m mults just in case 10m never
opened again

40m was much better the second night, as was 80  I even managed an exactly 100Q
hour on 80m at 0200. I was calling a zone 17 double mult with no success on
3504. He QSYed, and I took over. Two zone 17s called me in the next hour! 160
wasn’t as good night two. I slept some extra time on Saturday night  about 2
hours. When I got up, I couldn’t quite understand why some things were sending
streams of data comprised of dits and dashes. I knew it was important however,
and just tuned and listened until my brain clicked. It clicked as soon as I
found a station I needed!

Sunday morning was sucky on 15 and 10, but 20m was cooking for a long time. Most
callers were piss-weak, but steady. The last two hours of the contest fell
apart. All the signals sounded strange. Changing headphones helped a lot, and I
thought something “auroral or solar” might have been happening, but I couldn’t
really tell. 15 didn’t open to Asia like Saturday night, but there were a very
few very loud and hideous distorted JAs on sending very slowly. I couldn’t run
JA, and 40 sucked too. I CQed on 40 for a while and S&Ped 20, but then just
concentrated on S&Ping 20 and picked up a few new mults too.

I had far more EUs try to blatantly steal my run frequency this year. None
succeeded. I only called two stations lids. With one I finally sent “XX2XX QSY
LID” about a dozen times in a row and he left (does that make me a lid too?).
Hey, when a guy is 20+ over on a band I’m loud on, I KNOW he can hear me. And if
he can’t hear, what’s he doing occupying valuable spectrum? Only one non-EU
frequency fight. A brief one with VP5W on 20m  I figure one of us accidentally
bumped the VFO or similar. I think we fairly quickly realized that there was
empty spectrum both above and below us and we both slid up/down a several
hundred Hz. VP5W then flat out refused to work me for a new mult the next couple
of hours  not that I tried that hard, but another case of someone who is 59
+20++trying to ignore me. Hey, we were both probably tired and cranky :)

I had some strong and definite thoughts as I got tired. No, Europe was not a
small dimly light area to my lower left like in last years CQWWCW :) My thoughts
were around the calls this year. Examples follow (remember I was/am sleep
deprived):

F5ICC  a good and fast op I always enjoy working. I decided he was a French
trucker this time, and although I knew the call was “F5ICC” I only copied “F5CC”
and had trouble getting my fingers to type “I” into the logging program as well.
I love working Fs. They are fast and efficient, and generally out for a few
hours having fun.

IK3OII  double Is give me trouble. And this is a tough one. Most Italian calls
suck, and that’s why there are many special short calls in use. And Italians
just can’t believe that anyone actually copies their calls right the first time,
and insist on sending them again at least 2-3 three times, while simultaneously
talking with both hands to someone else in the shack :)

EA3ESE  I started singing “Old McDonald had a farm, E I E I O” when he called.
The kids, playing in the shack at the time, were amused. They also liked it when
I stopped sitting in the chair (44 hours 40 minutes is a long time) and stood on
it instead. I used a backscratcher to type, and sang a song about organic turkey
corn dogs that drove the children from the shack.

All these super weak Gs! Funny thing is that I know most of their calls and they
call me in every contest with their 10 watts and low G5RV strung between low
bushes.

UT0RM  all I could think was “big storm a brewing!”

WW0WWW  long live vanity calls, I guess. Then again, my favorite guest op just
changed his call to NN1NNN! And wants to operate from CN for ARRL CW with a KW
(CN/NN1NNN 5NN NNN)

HE3RSI  so, do you like getting asked for repeats? And did I bust your call
anyway :)

5K5Z  so, you get credit when your call is logged as HK5Z, but they lose it? No
I didn’t bust it, did I?

FR1HZ  I imagined a young op with very frizzy hair

WP2Z  Puerto Rican Pez dispenser.

OE5OHO  hey, OE5OSO is finally out of the SCP partial database :)

All the YLs who called. I was absolutely certain that some computer generated
fists belonged to YLs. don’t ask me how, but I was certain at the time!

IK0YVV  I imagined that you had opera playing in the background. Your call is
always easy to pull out of pileups too.

K1AR  are you omnipresent or what? When I S&Ped you were everywhere. In the
words of Mick Jagger, “Hey Hey You You get outta my pileup.”  In comparison, I
never heard K5ZD or KQ2M once.

Thanks to everyone that called! I really don’t want to wait a whole year for the
next one.

73
Ted KT1V

Ted Demopoulos
Demopoulos Associates, www.demop.com
Aligning Information Technology with Business Objectives.

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