[3830] WPX CW WC1M(@KT1V) SOAB HP
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Mon May 29 17:39:34 EDT 2006
CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: KT1V
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 1
80: 72
40: 758
20: 1309
15: 859
10: 4
------------
Total: 3003 Prefixes = 908 Total Score = 8,736,776
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Congrats to KC3R (LX4AX) and NY4A (N4AF) for great scores -- it was a close
race. I didn't have the most QSOs or mults, but evidently I had the most QSO
points. More on that later.
When I told K5ZD that I would be operating from KT1V, he offered encouragement
and good advice, then told me not to break his record! Well, my raw score
doesn't beat the record-breaking raw score Randy posted last year, but it's a
little higher than his post-UBN score. Theoretically, I have a shot at the
record, but it would take a miracle of accuracy. Still, a chance for second
all-time highest is better than I ever expected. I didn't think I could get
close to the record until the last hour or so, when I started regretting 20
minutes of idle on-time, my mediocre peak hours in the 15m runs Saturday
morning and the many operating mistakes I made. Good thing for me Randy
couldn't do an all-out effort this year. I have no doubt he would have
obliterated me and set a new record over 9 million points!
Of course, my home station couldn't have produced this kind of score (I was,
after all, the hapless guy K1TO "crushed" by two million points in 2003.) My
good fortune came as a result of Ted's commitment to his son Jamie's 6th
birthday party on Saturday. Having operated Ted's station in a couple of
successful M/S efforts, I jumped at the chance to see what I could do with real
antennas. I wasn't disappointed. Ted has built what is arguably the best active
Single-op station in New England, which pretty-much puts it at the top for the
USA. My biggest concern was that I would besmirch the station's reputation
unless I came very close to winning!
Although Ted has a fine pair of FT-1000Ds, good computers and good SO2R
capabilities, I've become so accustomed to my shack that I decided to rip out
most of the gear and bring it to Ted's. The radios are a Ten Tec Orion, which
does almost all the running, and an FT-1000D with the roofing filter mod. The
SO2R switch box is a homebrew unit based on a Writelog prototype board. Rather
than bring my big computer, I brought my fairly fast Thinkpad notebook with
Writelog all set up the way I want. I also brought an LCD monitor (low heat
output) and my own mini keyboard (on which the "V" key failed Sunday morning.)
Most of the preparation for this contest involved testing a new 4-port PCMCIA
serial card and tearing the station apart.
The rest of the preparation consisted of studying last year's breakdown sheets
for the top four and browsing K5ZD's log, a copy of which he generously sent
me. Another well-known contester once told me that you can't use the same
strategy for WPX from one year to the next, meaning you can't learn much from
breakdown sheets. Not so, at least at the bottom of the sunspot cycle. I used
almost the same band timing and off-time strategy as last year, which was
similar to Randy's pattern. There was only one important difference, which was
the result of realizing late in the contest that Ted's station offered a unique
opportunity to boost QSO points (I'll get to that shortly... :-)
Due to work and personal conflicts, I didn't get as much sleep leading up to
this contest as I would have liked, and that took it's toll in fatigue on the
first day. I had to ask for lots of fills, which in turn slowed my rate. I
think this was compounded by not having worked a CW contest since WW CW in
November. Good thing I had Ted's antennas!
After a two-hour drive, I arrived at Ted's a little later than I had planned
(1:00 PM instead of sometime in the morning.) Ted acquired a nasty flu bug
which had flowered in Dayton the weekend before, and he was really dragging
when I got there. The full-size 3-el 40m beam on the big 140' tower was facing
south and the rotor wasn't working. Ted hadn't felt well enough to climb the
tower to aim it at EU. I knew this antenna could be key (and I think it was),
so I decided to climb the tower myself, despite the fact that I had never been
higher than 100'. First, however, I tore down Ted's radios and installed mine.
As usual, this took a lot longer than expected, even thought I had tested
everything I could at home. Our band decoder setups are not compatible, so I
had to opt for manual switching (no big deal.) The Orion keyed one of the Acom
amps, but he 1000D refused to key the other one. It took me about 15 minutes of
frustration before I realized that I had turned off the linear relay in order to
use the keying loop. Had to pop the 1000D covers to deal with that.
Once the station was working, it was time to go up the tower (I had brought my
climbing harness, just in case.) With thunderstorms predicted for the
afternoon, and it being well past 3 o'clock, I had to work quickly -- not
something I like to do on towers. Being relatively new at it, I climb slowly. I
don't free climb -- I use a Y-lanyard for fall arrest and have to spend a fair
amount of time hooking and unhooking the grappling hooks. It sure takes a while
to get to 140 feet! The first job was to loosen the six big bolts on the rotor
mast clamp, which turned out to be rather more difficult than I expected. Once
that was done, I had to climb over the star guy bracket (also more difficult
than expected) and climb up to the top. Man, that M-squared full-size 3-el 40m
yagi is one beefy antenna! It's a thing of beauty. I wrestled it from south to
somewhere in the vicinity of 45 degrees, and high-tailed it back over the star
guy and down to the rotor. More time was taken tightening the six bolts as hard
as I could, which again took longer than I expected. When I got down to the guys
at 100 feet, I heard the first clap of thunder in the distance. That lit a fire
under me and I was down in what seemed like no time. It started to rain lightly
just as I got to the top of the anti-climb panels. Whew.
I knew the trip up the tower had sapped a lot of energy, and I would pay for it
during the contest. But even though Ted has a 2-el Cushcraft beam at 110' on
another tower, I felt that the big 3-el would give me an advantage on 40. In
fact, pending a look at everyone's detailed QSO point breakdown, I'm convinced
that if I won this contest it was because I climbed the tower and turned the
big 40m beam. Well, it was probably that and Ted's fine 80m 4-square.
With fewer QSOs than KC3R and NY4A, and fewer mults than NY4A, I must have
worked more 6-point stations and possibly more 3-point stations. The big 40m
beam and 80m 4-square were probably responsible for the 6-pointers. Maybe it
was because I was louder, or maybe it was because I had more F/B to reduce the
percentage of 1-point US stations. I certainly made an effort to work as many
EU stations as I could on the low bands. The performance of Ted's big 40m beam
inspired me to make a strategy shift late in the game. The conventional wisdom
is that rate really falls off on the second day of WPX. For that reason, it's
best to take as little off-time as possible the first day and end the contest
well before 0000z. Many people don't work the last hour or two of the contest.
In fact, it's possible that in some years the best strategy may be to work
almost straight through the first day and a half, and take most of the last 12
hours off. But the rate sheets from last year showed pretty good rate in the
late afternoon and early evening of the second day. Also, there were a lot of
mults available in the last couple of hours -- things always tend to get frothy
then. The rate sheets also showed that 40 didn't get wide open to EU until after
0000z. I decided to gamble that the 3-el 40m beam would be able to work EU
earlier than that, and took the rest of my off-time in the afternoon, between
1600z and 2000z. Sure enough, I was able to work a few stations in the 2200z
hour and got a small run going in the 2300z hour. I think this was better than
running 20 at low rate in the afternoon, especially since the mult production
there had gotten pretty low. This turned out to be a good decision, not only
for picking up 6-pointers and mults on 40 during the last hour, but for picking
up over 30 new mults on 20 from 2000z-2300z.
It appears that working EU on 40 and 80 compensated for my fewer QSOs on 20 and
15, although it's possible I worked a greater percentage of 3-pointers on those
bands. My continent breakdown shows 69% EU vs 22% NA, quite different from the
roughly 59% and 29% continent breakdowns for the top four stations last year. I
don't know if this was a function of different propagation and/or participation
this year, or a function of the fact that I rarely turned my beams away from
EU. I just never ran out of EU to work. In fact, I hardly turned the beams at
all, even when JAs were coming in early Saturday morning on 20. They were
plenty loud enough off the side of the beam.
As it happened, the 3-el 40m beam at 140' and the 7-el 10m beam at 150' on the
same mast weren't the only antennas that didn't turn this weekend. As it
happened, the 2-el Cushcraft 40m beam and the 4-el 10m beam at the top of the
10m stack were stuck on EU too! So, I had no ability to turn these antennas to
the US, nor to use them to scan for SA mults. This is probably why my SA
percentage is about half of what it was last year. I certainly worked my share
of mults off the back end of the big 40m beam and the stacks, and worked plenty
of US stations, but perhaps I stumbled onto a strategic advantage. Hard to say
without deeply analyzing the top three logs.
It felt like I didn't hit the second radio very hard on the first day. I tried,
but it just wasn't happening as much as I would have liked. I pushed it very
hard the second day. Still, this is one contest where the mults really come to
you when you're running. It helps to be loud, too. You certainly don't have to
work as hard for mults in WPX as you do in most other contests. I have still a
long way to go in improving the mult part of my game.
Sorry if this seems too analytical... the brain cells are still a little
frazzled.
Thanks to Ted for inviting me to operate his fabulous station and to Ted and
Margaret for their hospitality. Ted made an awesome Boar and Osso Bucco dinner
on Sunday night that really hit the spot after a much-needed shower. He has
many talents in addition to top-ten contester, master station builder, and
cryptographic security expert! I fully expect never to be able to pry Ted away
from his station on a big contest weekend, and much appreciate his allowing me
a chance to evaluate my operating skills from a world-class station.
I don't think we would be close to setting records in WPX without all the
participation by Russian stations. I couldn't believe how many there were. This
was fitting, as my family and Ted's adopted toddlers from Russia just a few
months ago. Ted's Stacy and our Aleksandr (Sasha), both two-years old, can be
proud of the hams from their country of birth -- they're some of the best CW
ops around. During one of my sleep-deprived moments, I even hallucinated that
all those Russians were dropping by to send their regards to our kids. Having
flown across the entire country to UA0D four times since December, and having
lived with a Russian family for about two weeks, I have a much better sense of
what's at the other end of those watery over-the-pole signals -- a lot of good
(and tough) people.
Now, back to working on the new tower -- my first big tower at home. Hopefully,
I'll see you all next year in WPX CW, operating from home with a stack!
73, Dick WC1M
Continent Breakdown:
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
EU 0 15 435 814 326 0 1590 59.0
NA 0 16 349 309 138 4 816 30.3
AF 0 1 6 11 6 0 24 0.9
AS 0 0 5 151 24 0 180 6.7
SA 0 0 16 16 24 12 68 2.5
OC 0 0 5 12 2 0 19 0.7
Rate Sheet:
QSO/Pref by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm
OffTime
D1-0000Z --+-- --+-- 102/91 16/15 --+-- --+-- 118/106 118/106
D1-0100Z - - 97/56 15/12 - - 112/68 230/174
D1-0200Z - - 40/24 64/37 - - 104/61 334/235
D1-0300Z - 1/0 92/52 10/4 - - 103/56 437/291
D1-0400Z - - 33/18 60/31 - - 93/49 530/340
D1-0500Z - - 55/30 30/12 - - 85/42 615/382
D1-0600Z - 1/1 64/29 4/2 - - 69/32 684/414
D1-0700Z 1/1 1/1 25/12 1/1 - - 28/15 712/429
20
D1-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 712/429
60
D1-0900Z - - 2/0 25/6 - - 27/6 739/435
30
D1-1000Z - - - 100/34 1/0 - 101/34 840/469
D1-1100Z - - - 114/35 3/2 - 117/37 957/506
D1-1200Z - - - 21/4 112/17 - 133/21 1090/527
D1-1300Z - - - - 124/23 2/1 126/24 1216/551
D1-1400Z - - - 7/3 100/24 - 107/27 1323/578
D1-1500Z - - - 13/4 87/21 - 100/25 1423/603
D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 15/3 61/12 --+-- 76/15 1499/618
D1-1700Z - - - 55/11 28/11 - 83/22 1582/640
D1-1800Z - - - 7/1 - - 7/1 1589/641
55
D1-1900Z - - - 42/8 1/1 - 43/9 1632/650
35
D1-2000Z - - - 95/28 10/8 - 105/36 1737/686
D1-2100Z - - - 89/15 7/4 1/1 97/20 1834/706
D1-2200Z - - 4/1 64/14 1/0 - 69/15 1903/721
D1-2300Z - - 7/2 73/18 - - 80/20 1983/741
D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- 65/6 7/1 --+-- --+-- 72/7 2055/748
D2-0100Z - 13/1 40/8 14/0 - - 67/9 2122/757
D2-0200Z - 41/11 7/0 - - - 48/11 2170/768
D2-0300Z - 15/5 60/9 2/2 - - 77/16 2247/784
D2-0400Z - - 8/1 8/2 - - 16/3 2263/787
42
D2-0500Z - - - - - - 0/0 2263/787
60
D2-0600Z - - - - - - 0/0 2263/787
60
D2-0700Z - - - - - - 0/0 2263/787
60
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 2263/787
60
D2-0900Z - - - 23/6 - - 23/6 2286/793
25
D2-1000Z - - 2/1 69/18 1/0 - 72/19 2358/812
D2-1100Z - - - 5/0 70/7 - 75/7 2433/819
D2-1200Z - - - 9/2 84/6 - 93/8 2526/827
D2-1300Z - - - 4/0 86/11 - 90/11 2616/838
D2-1400Z - - - 14/2 45/9 - 59/11 2675/849
D2-1500Z - - - 20/5 21/1 - 41/6 2716/855
D2-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 32/4 3/0 --+-- 35/4 2751/859
28
D2-1700Z - - - - - - 0/0 2751/859
60
D2-1800Z - - - - - - 0/0 2751/859
60
D2-1900Z - - - - - - 0/0 2751/859
60
D2-2000Z - - - 63/12 2/1 1/0 66/13 2817/872
3
D2-2100Z - - - 67/14 5/2 - 72/16 2889/888
D2-2200Z - - 12/3 37/6 7/2 - 56/11 2945/899
D2-2300Z - - 43/6 15/3 - - 58/9 3003/908
Total: 1/1 72/19 758/3491309/375 859/162 4/2
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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