[3830] WAE SSB N8II Single Op HP

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                    WAE DX Contest, SSB

Call: N8II
Operator(s): N8II
Station: N8II

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): ~20

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  QTCs  Mults
-------------------------
   80:   40        19 X 4
   40:   69        28 X 3
   20:  723        46 X 2
   15:  154        31 X 2
   10:    0             0
-------------------------
Total:  986   950     124  Total Score = 607,950

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

Things did not start off well Friday evening. 20 was dead except for CT/EA
 with almost no activity. 40 was in good shape, but CQ'ing was very slow,
 and 75 was noisy with weak sigs, no joy from CQ's there either. So, I
 stopped after about 90 minutes and 40 Q's. 20 was open well when I rolled
 out of bed into the shack at a late 1128Z and I was able to run at a good
 rate til past 13Z when I should have been shopping on 15. My best rates of
 the contest were 67 Q's in the first 31 min, then 87 in the 12Z hour.
 Rates were slowed after that by sending QTC's. After a breakfast break,
 at 1350 I found 15 to be wide open to central/souhtern Eu and immeidately
 ran a pile-up which only lasted til about 1410Z when the band abruptly
 died out except to a few Med area stns; I had about 45 15M Q's but an
important 19 x 2 mults.
   20M continued to be a bottomless pit of casual ops as evidenced by
 their serial numbers. I'd guess a whopping 30% of my Q's sent a NR less
 than 10, and I introduced many to the test with their first Q. No other
 contest produces so many Q's with those who just get on to make few Q's
 and help us out, many thanks! The number of serious Eu competitors was
 quite low; CQ'ing was about the only game to play. 20 stayed open past
 23Z, better than usual condx of late. The best runs were around 20-22Z.
   I took off for dinner and a walk with the family around 2215 and
didn't return til about 24Z; they demanded a visit to the local ice
cream parlor. 40M activity was even a bit worse than the night before;
CQ'ing was just about a waste of time on a clear frequency. So, I moved
to a very noisy 75M band and found 3798 to be open and was able to run
off about 35 stations before the noise covered what was left. That was
better than past efforts. In order to work the casual ops, you need to
work Eu sunrise 75 and even more so on 40, as proven by KD4D's big total.
Sunday was decent on 20 til around 13Z when the rate dropped. I was
concerned that I had built up over 90 QTC's to send and most new Q's
were casual ops not interested in QTC's, so I started pleading for takers
and tuning 20 for serious ops I hadn't completed with yet. I found
only 4O5A on my first sweep of 15M at 1242Z; when I returned at 1307, the
band had opened pretty well and I started a nearly instant pile-up of
callers about 5-7 deep at times. I had worked them down by 1332 and
took off a total of 7 min to wouf down a couple of pancakes, then back to
15 which closed almost exactly the same time as the day before at 1415Z.
There was about a 10 min opening to Russia (UA1,3,4,6 all worked) around
1345, which came as a pretty big surprise. A few of the big guns from
northern Eu called in with marginal sigs, but I couldn't find any more
S&P'ing towards the end of the opening. Such are the joys of the bottom
of the cycle; it was still broad daylight in Eu!
  20 was pretty punk after 15 closed, so I took off a bit. Surprisingly
the 16 and 17Z hours were quite good with surprisingly strong sigs. I had
all of my QTC's sent by about 18Z, but fell behind by over 30 at the end
due to the lack of serious ops willing to take them.  Both afternoons
central and western Eu peaked in the 20Z hour. The G's peaked in the
22-23Z hour Sunday, with many new calls logged from the HF privilege
neophytes, lots of G1,6,8, 2E0's. I finally was able to run a few
stations in the last 30 minutes on 40, most worked on my own freq.
Like WX3B, I hadn't planned to spend that much time, but I got sucked
into the fray. It's more fun to run when you're not fighting the heavy
QRM of a major contest, for sure.  Thanks to TA1DX and 9H3YM who called
late on 20 with very low serial numbers. I operated without packet. I had
to hunt for OM2VL Sunday afternoon on 20, then 2 OM's called with #'s
less than 20 late afternoon. Thanks again to those who stopped by and
gave out their first or second Q, etc., they really helped the score.


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