[3830] CQWW SSB WA0VBW SOAB QRP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: WA0VBW
Operator(s): WA0VBW
Station: WA0VBW

Class: SOAB QRP
QTH: Minnesota
Operating Time (hrs): 21.33

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:    1     1        1
   40:                    
   20:   57    16       34
   15:  227    24       75
   10:  180    23       65
------------------------------
Total:  465    64      175  Total Score = 303,530

Club: Minnesota Wireless Association

Comments:

Well I really screwed up in planning for this one.  I had originally planned to
go all band (QRP single op) before the great conditions developed a week prior
to the contest.  So I figured that it would be a good time to go single band on
15 and try to get the 0 district QRP record for that band, figuring that 10
wouldn't give me the long haul effect I needed for multipliers.  It seemed like
a good plan - after all I had worked VQ9 on 15 the weekend before the contest. 


Friday night started out well with a decent little opening to JA which closed
down after a couple hours.  It wasn't a really strong opening, but I could get
through.  On Saturday morning, 15 was wall-to-wall QRM with short skip and long
skip combining to make it sound like 20.  It was really a struggle.  By Saturday
night I only had a little over 200 QSO's on 15.  

On Sunday morning the QRM, which had been rough all day Saturday, seemed worse,
and it was pretty much impossible to work in to Europe with only 3 watts on the
early opening on 15.  I heard (S9+) some good additional multipliers that I
hadn't heard on Saturday, but I couldn't make them hear me.  So I took a peek at
10 meters around 9 AM local time - Europe and a few stations from Africa were
coming in.  Just for the heck of it, I called a 6W and a ZS and got both on the
first or second call - a refreshing departure from the mess on 15.  So I decided
to scrap the original plan, abandon the 15 meter single band effort and see what
I could do on 10.  

I wish there was a two-band category!  Considering I only had about 9 hours to
milk 10 (and pick up some multipliers on 20), it all turned out pretty well. 
But it definitely wasn't a good approach to an "all-band" effort.  This really
serves me right.  I didn't have enough faith in my favorite band: 10 meters. 
And it would probably have been the best choice this year for a single band QRP
effort.  I didn't even listen to 10 on Saturday.  Oh well.  

One of the reasons I had elected to go single band is that my long band antennas
are pathetic.  I've got to get better antennas for 40 and 80.  At this point in
time, I don't even have a second receiver, so 40 is pretty much a lost cause. 


The station consists of a Ten Tec Argonaut 509 (3 watts out) with a tribander 50
feet high and dipoles.


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