[3830] ARRLDX CW ON4UN SOSB/80 HP

[john devoldere]

   ARRL DX Contest, CW

 Call: ON4UN
 Operator(s): ON4UN
 Station: ON4UN

 Class: SOSB/80 HP
 QTH: Belgium
 Operating Time (hrs): 20

 Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
 -------------------
  160:
   80:
   40:
   20:
   15:  868    54
   10:
 -------------------
 Total:  868   54  Total Score = 140,816

 Club: RRDXA

 Comments:

This past summer, I rebuilt the 80m 4-square with Roger, ON6WU. It's like a
new one: new elements, new feed systems, new quarter-wave feed line. We are
experimenting with the Comtek as well as the WX0B box, but will report on
that later (at the Antenna forum in Dayton). I also rebuilt the Beverage
feed system, and the main US-Beverage is a end-fire phased  pair (about 170
m long each) using the cross-fire feed system as developed by W8JI, and
described in detail in my coming new Low Band DXing book (will be available
in May in Dayton). This would be the first ARRL CW 80m contest with the
ORION.

The last two years I was unable to participate for various family related
reasons, so I looked forward to this one. Right at the beginning of the
contest I noticed an A index of 22 with a K of 3 or 4, which is not really
brilliant. But also, the sun was quite active, which was proven all weekend
long by excellent conditions between Europe and the USA on 15 m. In a real
good year for the low bands 80 and 160, 15 must be "dead".

Before I stared the contest, I had NOT looked at the high 1997 score, I did
not want to do the contest "under pressure", I just wanted to enjoy it. I
quickly found a good frequency around 3511, and staid there for a very long
time. 3500 to 3505 is often jammed by fisherman phone, and 3505 to 3510 is
often jammed by what sound like an electric fence, but it is not. Above 3510
are the better frequencies here in Europe nowadays; but that, of course, can
change any time. The first hour yielded 90 QSO's, not bad and the second and
third hour were even better with 100 and 110 QSO's. Usually it is a little
slow in the beginning because 20 is still good, but once the high bands are
gone they all migrate to the low bands.

It's always fascinating to see the skips creeping West. I have a world map
on one of the PC's, on which you see the terminator move, very handy. When
would I see my first West coast (W7 or W6) in the log?  The first station
was W8AEF in Arizona at 01:46, about 30 minutes after his sunset, 10 minutes
later followed by NK7U on Oregon, and ore than one hour later by my first
California (K6OY) and Washington state station (WA7LT).  OK, the skip seems
to cover the entire target area, so now it's a question of attracting the
attention of the rare ones, like Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho, Montana and both
Dakota's. I hope I get spotted frequently. I can tell from my log every time
someone spots me, all of a sudden the rate jumps up for about 5 or 10 QSO's,
and then it slows down again.

During full 4 hours the average rate was exactly 100 QSO's per hour, not
really bad for 80 meters from Europe to North America. Later I found out
that this is exactly 10 % less than in 1997, when we scores an average of
110 QSO's per hour over the first 4 hours. But that was at the bottom of the
previous sunspot cycle.

In the 5th hour the rate was still 90, but then it dropped to 60 and 35 in
the last hour before sunrise. In the last hour before sunrise the West coast
signals became more predominant nbut not really strong, and when the sun
came at the Eastern horizon I had 575 QSO's in the log, that's only 70 QSO's
less than in the record year 1997!

By the morning I had worked 23 West coast stations (Az: 7, Ca: 9, Or: 3, WA:
3, UT:1, NV:1 and BC: 1). Still a lot of good multipliers missing out West:
Id, Mt, Wy, but of course, there is another night! So, no reason to panic
yet!

Already after the first night I have been amazed how quiet the band can be
in a contest. The new Ten Tec Orion has no (NIL) spurs of phantom signals.
What you hear is what is there, and nothing more. What a tremendous
improvement from my previous radios. No "alien" sounding undecipherable CW
crud in the background any more. A real luxury!  East European signals were
30 to 40 dB down with my end-fire phased Beverages, so it was really quiet.
All I heard were the occasional clicks from FT1000's I guess that came too
close to "my" frequency. Talking about "my" frequency, I only had one
"little" frequency "argument", with G4BUO, who drifted onto my channel. My
logging program (N1MM, the best), logs the transmit frequency with 10 Hz
accuracy, so I know where I am. Also, I never use a RIT, I always use one
VFO (B) to transmit, while the A VFO is used for receive, this way I stay
"put". The RX VFO is controlled from the remote "pod" which is paced next to
the mini keyboard, which is very handy (pic)

I had hoped for a similar QSO rate the second night but it did not turn out
that way. As usual the early evening hours (between 21:30 and 24:00 GMT)
were slow, the high bands still thriving. But it usually is a good time to
work some of the stations from the Canadian Atlantic provinces. And yes,
soon I worked my first VO1, and a second and a third within minutes, and
Prince Edward Island (VY2TT). But no Labrador, and no New Brunswick yet.

The rate slowly crept up, but got nowhere near to what happened on the first
night.  The first hour in the new day we had less than 40 QSO's (91 the day
before) and the second hours just over 40  (99 the previous day). On then it
collapsed to a mere 17 QSO's between 02:00 and 03:00 GMT, to climb up slowly
again around 40/hour in the next two hours, and 29 QSO's in the last hour
prior to sunrise. In short: a boring situation. How about the West Coast?  A
total of 25 were worked the second night which is almost exactly the same as
the first night (23). Montana (W7LR, who else) was the only new multiplier
in the West (03:23), with in addition 11 new calls from California, 5 from
Oregon, 1 from Washington, 3 (!!) from Utah and 3 from Arizona. My New
Brunswick multiplier (who else than VE9DX) woke up my spirits for a while,
as they had already half gone to sleep. There was a clear peak in the band
for that area around 03:30 to 05:00 GMT and a second peak around 06:00 -
0630, one half hour before our sunrise.

Time to do a multiplier check: still need Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota;
in the US, but the last one (ND) I had already written off. Maybe next year
we should organize a DXpedition to ND? With only a little over two hours of
80m propagation to go at the end of the contest, the score would not change
that much any more. With 836 QSO's and approx 132 k-points I hit the sack
for a couple of hours.

At 21:30z I switch on the automatic CQ machine on 3510 kHz, hoping for
another 30 or 40 QSO's but not even dreaming of another multiplier. In the
next 1 hour and 20 minutes I work another 10 East coast stations, which is
the normal rate at this time of night at th end of the contest. And then,
out of the blue a perfectly Q5 call from W7NQ in Az (22:54z), two and a half
hours before his sunset! Gee, what a band! In the last hour, the QSO rate
climbed rapidly, all the guys that had "forgotten" that 80 existed, and
quickly came down to the forgotten band to catch a few more multipliers: 36
new stations were worked between 23:00z and midnight. And that was not all:
to put the proverbial cherry on a good cake, NO7X from Wyoming called me for
a new multiplier 9 minutes before the end of the contest.

Why no VE4, 5 or 6?? There must have been a good amount of aurora
absorption, and these are the states - with relatively little activity on
the low bands- that suffer most from it. Was that the reason why nobody was
heard from Idaho either?

I realize that conditions were not "very" good, although "reasonably good"
There was propagation to the West Coast, my total of some 55 W6 and W7
stations proves it, and that is even a few more West Coast stations compared
to the 1997 record year. But the big difference is that signals were
generally much weaker. And I was using  a better antenna, a little more
power and a much better receiving antenna system (end-fire phased
Beverages). So I was able to dig a little deeper into the noise to unravel
the weak ones. Often I heard stations too weak to pull through; maybe it was
a VE5 or a VE6 calling. With 3 dB more signal due to better propagation, I
guess I would have pulled out at least another 50 ones, including maybe 2 or
multipliers. But all of this is just guesswork. Or looking for an excuse not
to have beaten the 1997 record. Well, maybe G0IVZ did it.

What is "the" highlight I will always remember from this contest? There are
two

  1.. The absolutely superb receiving properties of the ORION, and that
coupled to the fact that the only kin of signals that bother me now are the
clicks from (unmodified) FT1000s and likes.
  2.. Working NO7X from Wyoming for my last new multiplier, just before the
end of the contest and about one hour before his sunset.

The computer and the excellent N1MM contesting software calculated the
score as:

QSO's: 868
Multipliers: 54
Score: 140,616 points

After the contest I did some analysis.  Both the data for this contest
as well as the 1997 contest are in the charts, which you can see by going to 
:
www.uba.be, choose English, and go to the bottom of the Englsih entry
page, where you click on the yellow "banner".

After the charts you can also find the "1997 story", which I found in my
archives. It's an interesting document to compare with the present 2005
report, I think.

Thank you all who called me, also those I could not copy. I will keep
improving my station, and with the help of conditions, I hope I will be able
to copy you in next year's contest!

73, John, ON4UN
Feb 22, 2005