[3830] CQWW CW PZ5TT(VE3DZ) SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: PZ5TT
Operator(s): VE3DZ
Station: PZ5RA

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Paramaribo
Operating Time (hrs): 43.8
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  227    14       37
   80:  644    23       76
   40: 1397    29       95
   20: 2260    34      113
   15: 1275    28      105
   10:   35    12       17
------------------------------
Total: 5838   140      443  Total Score = 9,955,308

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

First of all I would like to express my sincere thanks to my host, Ramon PZ5RA
and his family. This was first my first trip to a "3-point" location warm
tropical QTH after about 10 of doing CQ WW from "up north" - CQ Zone 2.
The trip itself wasn't easy. It took about 17 hours from me to get to Point B
(Paramaribo) from Point A (Toronto). However, I arrived 5 days ahead of the
Contest and was completely confident that I would have enough time to rest and
set up the station. Ramon met me at the airport and drove me to the station.
The temperature outside was +35 C, quite a difference after minus 5 C in
Toronto! But there is A/C in the shack, so I felt very comfortable.
I spent next few days testing the station and learn the propagation, operating
mostly RTTY and SSB or CW on WARC bands. Pile-ups were really huge sometimes,
especially on low bands. There is no any RX antenna for Topband at the station,
so 160 was a bit tough, even NA is not very loud there. Also I noticed some kind
of line noise that was coming, of course, precisely from the EU direction, but
it never exceeded s3, and I was not really concerned about it. Ramon told me
that he never heard that noise before. But on Friday the level of the noise
increased and became S7 at peaks...
On Friday before the contest I decided to take a nap before the contest hoping
that it will help me to stay awake the whole contest. For some reasons I
couldn't. I spent few hours in bed, did some reading, but slept for only about
an hour...
Conditions on Friday night were pretty good, with a lot of NA and some JAs
coming, so I decided to start on 20 m with the 2nd radio on 80. However, the
pile-up quickly became so big that I had to focus on one radio only. 
Later I discovered that RX on my 2nd radio stopped working (the reason yet to
be found), so this was the end of my short SO2R operation... However, the
pile-ups were so big, that I almost never felt that I needed 2nd radio. 
40 was especially tough. It's a pleasure for me to run a pile-up when 5, even
10 stations are calling, but when 100's are calling at the same time... I think
mentally I was not prepared for that. I don't know why, but I hesitated to go
split on crowded 40 m band and that was probably another mistake because I had
to send twice almost each time I answered a call... My other mistake was
staying on 160 and then later on 10 for too long, calling CQ and hoping for new
mults. :-)
Morning brought me another "surprise" - the noise on 15 m increased to S7,
which made pulling weak EU signals out of noise not an easy task. The noise
stayed all day, only disappearing for a moment and then quickly coming back...
It also affected 10 m reception big time, luckily on 20 m it was tolerable.
By the time I went to 80 m at around 03:00 UTC on Sunday, I felt completely
done and I started to fall asleep on keyboard. Cold shower helped only for a
half on hour. I decided to take a couple of hours nap, but, of course, I 
overslept, and got up 4 hours later instead. EU was long gone on 80, some of it
was still workable on 40 m though. It was kind of fun to work stuff like YB, HS,
JA's over the North pole on 40 in the morning.
Sunday morning and afternoon went under pretty much the same scenario as
Saturday, except the noise on 15 m increased to S 8, but the good news was that
it became intermittent and sometimes I could enjoy "clear" a5 and 
10 meters. Not often though...
At the end of the test I went to 40 again, and could only find "some" space
around 7095, the band was extremely packed with CW stations up to 7100...
Despite all the small problems, I am pretty satisfied with my score and
experience operating from a "3-pont" location, even though I missed my goal of
6000 Q's and 10 M points by a tiny bit. I believe next time I will do better.
:-)
Again, big thanks to Ramon and his family and to all people who agreed to move
for me (too many to mention).
Congratulations to CT3NT, V47NT and 8P5A on great scores. Amazingly, I never
worked or heard Andy, V47NT, though he made over 7000 Q's... Only 1 QSO with
V26K and J3/DL5AXX who (both) are at 5500 Q's level... 
I believe a couple of big scores are yet to come (3V8BB, V31WA, etc.)
I have more than a dozen of 6-banders in my LOG. Just remember huge signals of
D4C and HC8N on ALL bands. I don't know how I could miss 3X5A on 40... 
Thanks to all for the QSOs! 

Yuri


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