[3830] NAQP CW VA7ST Single Op LP

Sun Aug 2 11:48:48 PDT 2009

                    North American QSO Party, CW

Call: VA7ST
Operator(s): VA7ST
Station: VA7ST

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: BC
Operating Time (hrs): 8.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    3     2
   80:   96    31
   40:  221    50
   20:  226    43
   15:    4     2
   10:           
-------------------
Total:  550   128  Total Score = 70,400

Club: British Columbia DX Club

Team: 

Comments:

2009 -- Flux: 68  | Ap: 3  | Kp: 1 -- no sunspots
2008 -- Flux: 66  | Ap: 2  | Kp: 2 -- no sunspots

SO1R Gear:
* FT-2000 + N1MM Logger
* SteppIR 3-el. at 47'
* 40M SteppIR dipole
* 80M 2-element wire vertical array
* Inv-L 160M (70' high, 60' horizontal)

I had a crappy day, and a really great evening on the air that allowed me to
handily beat my previous best for August NAQP. 

10M was dead as a stump so I opened up on 15M, which was almost dead too.
Missed out on tons of mults -- even last August's piddly propagation offered up
12 mults on 15, but just two this year (CA and TX). During the day many folks
asked me to try 15M and I QSY'd a dozen times but never heard a soul.

Went to 20M after just 4 Qs on 15M. VY2SS was my first Q on 20M, which was very
nice -- thanks for PEI. You were loud out here, Robby. A rare mult out of the
gate was not a sign of things to come. 20M was bleak with the most horrendous
fading effects I've seen. Sometimes, one or two characters (not just elements)
entirely dropped out in an exchange. One station would be loud as a klaxon and
the next station barely audible. Things were different when I got back on at 3
p.m. 2200z after a 2-hour break. Then 20M was alive and folks were hearing me.

I was West Coast horseracing with Coos Bay's own Tom W7WHY in the afternoon...
(always liked Tom's callsign. My 'other' call is VE7ASK, so WHY is a good
match). We traded spots on Livescores about 10 times, always within a few
hundred points of each other. 

For me, watching the progress of friends on http://www.getscores.org/ has
become a wonderful addition to contesting. And for competition excitement, it's
a bit like short-track cycle racing, when the lead rider pedals along with an
eye over his or her shoulder on the person right behind -- gauging, watching,
waiting for the surprise move to take the lead. 

I kept watching to see if Tom was going to leap to 40M and surge ahead with a
pile of new mults.... Great fun. Thanks for a couple hours of extra enjoyment
Tom. (Oh, yes, I bet your wire antenna on 15M was working fine -- but the band
was definitely broken from our end of things).

Conditions were so lousy during the day I was convinced I'd never catch last
year's modest score of 44K. But things clicked on 40 and the mults piled on.
Same with 80M. 

I had to force myself to leave 20M for 40M at 0114z. The big surprise was the
Steppir dipole. Once the band warmed up, 40M was truly amazing. VE1OP was like
nextdoor instead of half way to Spain. Last August I went 138 for 42 mults with
a phased set of half-squares. This year, 222 for 51 mults. 

I had to really force myself to leave 40M for 80M as the callers just kept
coming. Rate was well above 100/hr when I jumped to 80M at 0400z. Couldn't hang
around on 40M with the 80M mults waiting to be caught and the prospect of
east-coasters going QRT early.

80M was tough at 0400z -- noisy and signals choppy. But things improved a lot
by 0500z and built very nicely in the final hour.

Tried 160M (having attached a big coil across the 135' Inverted-L feedpoint)
but the band wasn't very good. Just 3 Qs and 2 mults.

Because I am a frontrunner in the lazy ham sweepstakes, two of the six coax
runs coming into the shack are unlabelled at the moment (everything else is
well-identified). One mystery cable is the 160M Inverted-L, and the other is
the Beverage. I had to guess which was which. As you can imagine, I guessed
wrong. 

I got things hooked up, tuner in line for good SWR, and tried a few guys but
they didn't hear me. I figured "Some silly bugger must have picked the
Beverage" and cleverly switched the coax lines (this was the 'guessed wrong'
moment). I made two contacts in a row after that, but things didn't "feel"
right. Turns out two of my three 160M QSOs were made while transmitting via a
270' Beverage about 6' off the ground. Must have toasted the fine wires that
run through the binocular transformer as the SWR quickly went into Buzz
Lightyear mode (to infinity and beyond). I swapped back to the real 160M
antenna but just didn't have he heart to stay on that band with 80M rates
beckoning just a bandswitch away. 

One of these days, I think I'll label the mystery cables.

The Beverage transformer will be easy to fix, but I didn't have it available
for 80M in the final hour. Don't think I missed many 80M callers, though, as
the noise wasn't as bad late in the evening. Was tremendous fun running at
great rate for more than an hour, and everyone was strong! Even my good friend
Ed VE4EAR called in to share that precious MB mult. 

Despite a dead 15M band, thanks to healthier-than-ever totals on 20, 40 and 80,
I ended up breaking my personal best for August NAQP -- and did it in just 8.5
hours on the air, which is half an hour less than last year and a full 1.5
hours less than the previous best in 2007.

Overall, had a complete blast! 

I'm not really adept enough to handle SO2R in a CW test, but think I'll try
this one SO2R next time. Could have kept running 40M all night.

WAEDC-CW next. Dust off the narrow CW filters. Imagine the entire world packed
into the bottom 25 khz of 40M because someone at Region 1 HQ thinks it's a good
idea to ban CW contesting above 7.025. Yikes. It would be a real pain... if I
was able to work EU on 40 from here :)

Then NAQP SSB. Need six states confirmed on phone for Triple Play, so will be
hunting for DE, ME, NE, ND, SC and WY.

-- Bud VA7ST
http://www3.telus.net/va7st

Year-over-year for August NAQP:

2009: 551   128  70,400
2008  386   116  44,776
2007: 481   131  63,011
2006: 457   129  58,953
2005: 419   129  54,051 <- added tower and beam
2004: 175    72  12,600 <- wires only
2003: 261    86  22,446 
2002: 191    72  13,752

Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/