[3830] TBDC K4XD Single Op HP

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                    Stew Perry Topband Challenge

Call: K4XD
Operator(s): K4XD
Station: K4XD

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 7.75

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 193  Total Score = 836

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

Well, that was fun!  I wasn't sure how much time I would have with all the
residual holiday activities still going on, but I love top band and somehow
"The Stew" appeals to my sense of being competitive while not taking yourself
horribly seriously.  The light-hearted "press releases" in advance of the
contest all have an element of tongue-in-cheek humor, and how can you resist an
exciting contest from a Boring amateur radio club?  

I knew I was going to be grilling the steaks for dinner around 0100 UTC
Saturday night, which would probably be when the Top Band Distance Challenge
was in full-swing, so I knew I had little hope of winning any category that
depended on the BIC factor.  Nevertheless, this is the contest of quirky
categories -- heck, the sponsors practically encourage you to invent a category
that only you can win so you can get a plaque (and sponsor it, of course!).  Now
that's my kind of contest!  Of course I didn't get my act together in time to
sponsor one this year -- the mind reels at the options "Most QSO's by a North
Carolina ham using an Inverted L with 49 radials" -- would visitors the shack
really know the difference?  Walnut is walnut... 

So on Saturday afternoon I poured over the sponsored plaque categories and
found one that looked promising.  I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you,
so let's just say it is a category that kept me from ever sending dit dit dit 
dit dah dah dit all weekend long.  

As if this was not enough excitement, I decided it would be a great opportunity
to give Win-Test a shot, since I bought it about six months ago on the urging of
a fellow amateur but gave up in frustration after it kept blowing up on me while
trying to configure it to work with my radios and Winkey.  I'd read enough
glowing reports to want to give it one more try.  I'm here to tell you I got it
configured (it blew up three times but on re-start was OK -- it doesn't seem to
like it when you change port settings, but then they work after you bring the
app back up.  I guess I can relate, I never did like change that much myself),
and ran the whole contest with it.  Will I leave Writelog for my new love? 
Read on and see.

I'm never exactly sure when to start a 160M contest in earnest.   Maybe it's
just me, but I certainly would not think of scanning 160M for good DX in the
middle of the afternoon on an average weekend.  But when a 160M only contest is
running, I can watch the signals dancing on the Icom 756 Pro II scope display
almost any time of the day or night.  Yes Virginia, the band does work during
the day.  But how many more Q's will you really get if you work from noon until
7PM vs 5PM to 7PM?  Probably not a whole bunch.  So I fired it up around sunset
and started S&P'ing my way up the band (but not sending S or P).  One of the
things I immediately liked about Win-Test and this contest was that the log
shows the distance to each station based on the grid square input as part of
the exchange.  So I can tell you my first five QSO's were 646, 556, 847, 182
and 377 kM (or is that miles... hmm, no units in the log header) distant.  I
also enjoyed watching the grid squares light up on the gridsquare map as I
worked stations one-by-one.  

I also like the rate display in Win-Test - there is a cool running bar graph
that shows the rate for each of the last fifteen minutes, so you can see at a
glance if your rate is going up or down.  It's also color-code so you can see
what continents you are working, perhaps a good hint which way to steer the
antenna(s).  

The band map is OK but I like Writelog's a little better -- although with no
cluster allowed in this contest, I probably didn't see Win-Test's at its
finest.  Pretty much used it as a record of which stations I had worked so on
the next S&P scan I could identify them even with a partial call heard and move
on.  I adjusted the persistence from 30 to 60 minutes, and about half the time I
found the same stations CQ'ing as on the last pass.

It took me a little while to figure out that hitting the space bar was the best
way to flip between the call sign and the grid square entry fields - I was
expecting the tab key to do the trick but it took me to the sent and rcvd RST
fields and then stopped -- and since I didn't want to enter anything into
either of those (although several people were sending 599's even though it is
not part of the required exchange -- maybe it just doesn't sound like a contest
with out di-di-di-di-dit da-dit da-dit ringing in your ears), visiting and even
stopping in those fields seemed superfluous.  I also expected to be able to
mouse click on the field of a previous QSO to edit it, but that didn't work.  I
found I could arrow my way into a previous QSO field to correct it, or go to
that exchange and edit it, but I'm baffled why a simple mouse click didn't get
interpreted as a desire to edit that field.  It's a pretty basic Windows UI
thing...

Anyway, those are nits and overall I would say Win-Test seems a very competent
contesting logger.  I think I'll stick with Writelog though, and I want to
really resist the desire to flip between them, as there is value in having
"everything in one place" so I can find it and compare years easily.  Writelog
has never lost a QSO for me in two years of lots of contesting.  Win-Test
didn't either, but having it blow up during configuration worried me.  

Back to the contest.  The first EU stations started making it into the log a
little after 0000 UTC, giving me 7144 km and 7592 km, 15 and 16 point catches. 
I really like the grid square exchange - truly meaningful -- and having the
score based on distance rather than the usual mults.  Giving an overall
multiple for power is a good idea too -- although as we know power is just a
piece of the equation, with antennas being as big or bigger a factor.  This is
a thinking man's contest -- should you run high power and go for long distance
contacts with big points?  Or run low power and get an overall multiplier of
total score?  Decisions, decisions.  I went with high power, because I'm in it
for fun as well as competition, and part of the fun for me is working the
stations as far away as possible.

Off to the grill... the steaks were quite tasty and the band was still hopping
when I returned around 0200.  Probably missed some great QSO's but so it goes.
It's the work-life balance thing you know... oops, did I say work?  The
radio-life balance?  OK, I'll admit it, it's "radio obsession -- yes, family, I
haven't forgotten you" balance!

Anyway, I had a good mix of EU and stateside stations for a while, with an
average points per Q popping up around 10 for a while.  I never saw my rate go
much over 40/hour, but given my choice of S&P, S&P, S&P, that's not too
surprising.

While I think my logging accuracy was pretty good, that glass of wine with the
steaks started making me sleepy and by 1AM local I couldn't keep my eyes open
even with all the usual tricks -- operating standing up, dancing from foot to
foot in time to the CW, calculating the distance between grids with a slide
rule, biting the inside of my mouth until I saw stars... I really don't know
how you 48 hour marathon men and women do it... of course as AA4NC likes to
say, that's what multi-ops are for...

I worked K7RAT before retiring for the evening (morning?), an important event
in the SP.  I then seemed to hear K7RAT on every band scan until an hour past
local sunrise!  Whatever you're doing, it's working.  

I woke up at 5:09 AM (digital clocks have forever changed how we answer "what
time is it?"), and after a few seconds of extra sleep, opened my eyes and
stared at an impossible sight, the clock saying 6:10 AM.   Fortunately I had
put a pot of coffee up before hitting the sack so I could hit the coffeemaker
"on" switch on a quick sweep through the kitchen and have a hot cup after my
first band sweep.  I added some more grids (too bad they are not mults,
Win-Test still gleefully reports "new grid square!" when you work one and it
really did lift my spirits) from the left coast and worked a very respectable
QRP station from 1492 km away.  Win-Test tells me my best DX was UW2M at 8772
km. away.  Too bad the amazing JA openings of last week didn't re-surface. 
Prior to them I was pleased as punch to have worked a single JA last Winter. 
During these recent openings, I worked 2 JA's one morning, and then the
following morning, emboldened by a 579 report from one, tried calling CQ and
actually got a pileup of JA's (well, 3 which for JA's on top band qualifies).

I kept at it until a whole scan yielded only one new station, and decided it
was time to put away the Stew and have some Breakfast.  

All-in-all, this was great fun and my thanks to the not Boring amateur radio
group for putting the "fun" in "Con-fun-test."  I bet you guys didn't even know
you did that, did you?  I'm already thinking of plaque categories for next
year... how about, "Longest 3830 Writeup with Least Actual Contest
Information?"

73,
Rowland K4XD


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