[3830] CQ160 CW ON4UN Multi-Op HP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW

Call: ON4UN
Operator(s): ON4UN, ON5OO
Station: ON4UN

Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: Merelbeke
Operating Time (hrs): 33

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 1436  State/Prov = 43  Countries = 81  Total Score = 1,106,462

Club: Rhein Ruhr DX Association

Comments:

My friend Jack, ON5OO and myself had fun (most of the time). Well that's the
positive point: our hobby, like any hobby, is there to enjoy! We enjoyed working
some good DX, but found it less enjoyable to listens to some stations with
horrible key clicks. Now that I have a transceiver that is absolutely clean even
with the strongest of signals on the band (no crud from intermod. etc),
key-clicks have really become problem number one. If yourself, you have a
transmitter that is very clean from key clicks, the problem is that stations
with bad key clicks move in so close to your frequency you're in real trouble.
Champion clickers were: SP3V. , OK5., HA3. (with in addition horrible noise
sidebands, PI4..., T98., and others. I made a long list. I think it should be
part of the competition to use a clean signal. Don’t know however how that
should be checked.  That's part of the bad news. The other bad news this year
was that conditions were generally POOR. We're almost at the down peak of the
cycle, and it was NO GOOD. I got the results of my 1996 cq-160m contest, and
whereas I worked 500W's in 1996, I only worked just over 300 this year! The
first night the band peaked quite well between 06:00z and 07:30 (my sunrise)
with 50% of all US contacts made in these 2 and a half hours! No real opening to
the West coast though: two W6 stations (W6RJ and K6GNX), not even a single
station from AZ, but one from Utah (NM7D) and that's it from W6/7 region. Two or
three stations in CO. During that same time frame the second night we made 6
(yes, six) North American QSOs: that's a pretty bad bad dead dead band. No
sunrise peak at all. Despite all of this we worked all the eastern states (all
W1,2,3,4,5 states, missed ND , SD and KS  though)... Poor propagation to the far
East as well with less than 10 Ja's, and nothing from the Pacific, not even
VK6VZ! On the other hand activity from European stations was up by 50% vs. 10
years ago (1090 vs. 750 Eu stations. Asia was don 30 Q's only vs. 46 in 1996! Al
together I just we just missed to break the 1996 score by 25 K points (about 2 %
of the score). Amazing, but it's the great number of Eu. QSO's that helped us
realize this reasonably good score.
When the band opens up to the West (USA) the phase Beverages (en fed phased) are
really winners. 
We had fun, and hope 2007 will be MUCH better propagation wise. Thanks to all
who gave us a point or called us. Sorry if we could not pull you through.
 CU all next year, and also in the ARRL CW contest soon.


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