[3830] ARRL 160 VE2OJ(@VA2BW) M/S HP

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                    ARRL 160-Meter Contest

Call: VE2OJ
Operator(s): VE2DWA/VE3AP/LU7DW, VE3FFK/VE3ZY, VE3IAY, VE3NJ, VE3XL
Station: VA2BW

Class: M/S HP
QTH: QC
Operating Time (hrs): 42

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 1385  Sections = 78  Countries = 33  Total Score = 339,105

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

Our (VE2OJ -  Outaouais Contest Operators' Association) best contest ever! (For
those not in the know, Outaouais is the French spelling for Ottawa). Three of
the five operators are members of Contest Club Ontario.

After a half-hour of S&Ping to scout the band, we settled into a run in the low
part of the band which netted us 675 QSOs in 7 hours. We then started to crawl
the band during the small hours, with the occasional run, but we were not
successful in working much DX the first night (2 EU stations, 2 in the
Caribbean).

During the daylight on Saturday, we were surprised to find QSOs kept coming in
at a steady pace of 15-20 QSOs per hour, so unlike previous years we kept right
on running throughout the day without a break.

Almost exactly 24 hours after our first big run, we settled down to another run
a few kHz above the DX window. This time we ran for 9.5 hours, netting 254 QSOs,
of which 101 were DX (mostly EU). During the 0430-0730 period, about 60% of our
QSOs were DX.

Oddly enough, we were apparently not spotted on the cluster during either of
these long runs, although we were spotted several times while running during
daylight hours.

On the dupe question: we had 70 dupes out of a total of 1485 contacts, or 4.8%.
Quite a few of these were from well-known contest stations; they certainly were
not all casual operators (although we also hit a few of those, some who gave
their zone or QTH as the exchange, from which we had to figure out the section).
Clearly some were insurance QSOs, which is not surprising given the sometimes
noisy conditions. Three stations called us three times.

We had a couple of reports of key clicks; our apologies to anyone affected. We
also had trouble with QRN, some of it local (we tracked down a noisy light
controller on Saturday afternoon). It was clear to us that we could not hear as
well as we were heard.

Rig:  Yaesu FT-ONE
Amp:  Henry 3K
Antennas: Low inverted L, one Beverage
Software: N1MM Logger 5.11.7


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