[3830] YO HF N2YO(@NR4M) SO Mixed HP

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                    YO DX HF Contest

Call: N2YO
Operator(s): N2YO
Station: NR4M

Class: SO Mixed HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 17

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Mults
---------------------------
   80:   65      3     31
   40:  223    122     76
   20:  385    182     96
   15:    5      0      4
   10:    0      0      0
---------------------------
Total:  678    307    207  Total Score = 915,147

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

It takes a couple of years for a contest to become popular and attract more and
more participants. I think the Romanian Amateur Radio Federation efforts to
improve the rules and advertise the contest are now rewarded. YO DX HF is now a
popular attraction as being the very last summer contest, a great opportunity
for operators to train and test equipment for the DX competition season.

The major improvement for the 2009 rules was the chance for stations to work on
the same band twice, once in CW and once in SSB. That was not accepted in the
past. And now if you want to play CW or phone only, there are single-mode
classes, which is also good. On the YO side the most important change was to
allow "special" call signs (such as YR9P, YP9W, YR1C etc) to compete. In the
past there was a ban on these short and exotic call signs as being considered
to be unfair to be used. Most of the contesting logs were changed to work with
those new rules and hopefully participants downloaded the latest updates from
internet. I myself used Writelog which was updated but unfortunately there was
a change not completed and I learned that the hard way. Writelog does not allow
logging YP, YQ and YR stations which is incorrect even with the older rules. The
YO stations were allowed to use special call signs in this contest, but were not
allowed to compete, i.e. to be considered with a score and awarded. When I
beta-tested the software update provided by Ron K5DJ I missed to check if
special YO calls are logged, since I assumed there should be no reason to
prevent that. During the weekend I worked about 20 YP/YQ/YR different stations
so I had to combine Writelog with special techniques including paper sheets and
a pencil.

In this contest I operated from the great station NR4M which is normally
present in major DX contests and in Multi/Multi classes. Thanks Steve NR4M and
Larry K7SV to allow me to operate! It's been quite an effort (performed by
Larry) to modify a position to accommodate a single operator mode with handy
antenna switches, only one power amplifier, all bands and mixed mode. The
equipment worked with no single issue. Unfortunately the weather gave me a hard
time. A local thunderstorm forced me to shut down the radio for no less than 3
hours in the middle of the contest when the 40 meter band started to build up.
A nice and intense rainbow between the towers rewarded finally the time spent
with antenna cables disconnected.

Propagation was poor. No contact on 10, only five on 15. The 20 meter band was
worse than last year. It was noisier and was open to Europe shorter than
expected. The 80 and 40 meter bands were not bad, but there was a lot of QRN
from thunderstorms.

My target was to reach the 1000 Qs but I had to end the contest just after I
sent serial #990. I think if I was not forced to disconnect the cables for 3
hours I would have done that. Anyway, that's my resolution for 2010.

Thanks for all the QSOs!

73s de Chip N2YO (YO3FWC)


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