[3830] CQWW CW WC1M SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 44
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   40    14       30
   80:  289    20       71
   40:  840    33      113
   20:  971    32      113
   15:  543    23       96
   10:    5     4        3
------------------------------
Total: 2688   126      426  Total Score = 4,200,168

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:

[WARNING: very long, read at your own risk!]

Congrats to K5ZD and K1DG for great scores and a virtual tie. Once again, the
log checkers will determine the winner. 

Thanks to all the ops who participated this year, especially those who
travelled to faraway places. One reason CQ WW is a great contest is because so
many people make the effort to get on and operate, and a lot of people deal
with the travails of operating from rare locations. Also, a tip of the hat to
those who dug my signal out of the noise when the path was tough. Thanks!

While my score isn't in the top five, and may drop below the top ten, I'm
pretty happy with this performance. Why? Because my mult numbers are the
highest percentage of the top claimed score than ever before, and my QSO
percentage is the highest it's been since 2003. 

Explanation: Although I'm always shooting for a personal best, it's hard to
compare apples to apples from one set of propagation conditions to another. So,
in an effort to get a more meaningful measure of performance, last year I put
together a spreadsheet that compares my QSO and mult numbers since 1997 to the
winner's numbers (in case you don't know, five out of 10 years the winner was
K5ZD, which is one reason he's in the Contesting Hall of Fame!) The spreadsheet
also keeps track of each year's solar flux, A index and K index during the
contest, and the antennas that I used.

Except for 10m, which was deader than a doornail here, my zone numbers were
very close to Randy's. I think this shows that my antennas are getting out to
all parts of the world that are open, and I'm finding the zones at the right
times. My country counts on 40, 20 and 15 are very close to Randy's, too, which
means the work I put in on my 110' tower with the 2-el 40 and SteppIR 3-stack is
paying off. My country mults lag Randy's badly on 160 and 80, which is what I
would expect from my 160/80 trapped inverted vee and 80 delta loop compared
with Randy's 160 vertical and 80 4-square (and possibly a better location.) I
didn't get around to improving my low band antennas this year, and the results
show it.

15m is worth a special note. For the past few years, I've been very
disappointed with my 15m performance. The spreadsheet shows that my QSO and
mult percentages had dropped precipitously since 2003, even after putting up
the SteppIR 3-stack. I've often claimed that it's a latitude phenomenon -- the
further north you are, the worse the high bands get at the bottom of the cycle.
There's some corroborating evidence from various stations in New England.
Nonetheless, I've worried that the SteppIR stack wasn't enough of an
improvement over my single 5-el monobander on 15. But this year 15 finally
opened enough to run Europe, and my 15m QSO and mults numbers are very close to
Randy's. Not only that, my 5-el monobander came back to life and was useful for
S&P while I was running 20 on the stack. That's a relief! I'm still down
percentage-wise on 10m, but the analysis shows I did much better on that band
back when we had some sunspots, and suggest the 3-stack will definitely yield
some improvement over the single 6-el monobander I was using back at the peak.

But the bottom line from all of this analysis is that the main reason Randy and
Doug beat me by nearly 3 million points sits squarely between my ears. Although
I have perennially complained about my low mult counts and latitude
disadvantage on 15 and 10, my analysis shows that the real difference is QSO
count. I was about 1000 QSOs behind the leaders this year, and that tells the
tale. Some of the lag is due to antennas: I can't match Randy and Doug on 160
and 80. But my antennas and the propagation on 40-15 were comparable, but my
QSO counts were 30%-35% lower than the leaders. Plain and simple, it's a skill
thing. While my ability to churn out QSOs has improved each year, and I'm
capable of good stretches at high rate, I'm still not able to optimize what's
there in front of me. I don't drain the pileups fast enough and I don't
supplement with the second radio often enough. I'm doing much better on mults,
but to some extent this is taking away time from running or efficiency when
running, which boils down to lack of proficiency using the second radio. It's
hard, man, especially when you're dog tired. But that's the challenge.

My takeaway this year is that I need to practice a lot more. I'm spending less
time on the radio these days, and I need to spend more. I rarely participate in
Sprint and NA QSO Party, which I should do to practice speed and using the
second radio. I need to get on for WAE to practice CW and I need to get on for
All-Asia to improve my understanding of propagation windows to Asia. Even
sitting and listening to DX with a radio in each ear will help. For years I've
spent a lot of time improving my antennas. Now that they're closing in on being
good enough, it's the operator that needs the most work.

Another area I'd like to work on is how I feel during WW. I've often had a lot
of trouble during the first day, especially the first few hours. This year I
felt quite good through the first night, and decided to go through the first 24
hours with either no sleep or just a 20 minute power nap. I started to feel not
so good at about 0930z and took the power nap. Being away from the radio
helped, but I wasn't able to fall asleep. As a result, I started feeling really
awful during the high-stress morning runs, and barely made it through. I'm sure
my QSO numbers suffered a lot. It was a struggle to make it through the rest of
the first day. As usual, once I got past the 24-hour mark I started to feel
better. At about 0200z I took a 40 minute break to eat and get away from the
radio. I took about two hours off between 0730z and 1000z, which included about
90 minutes of sleep and a half hour to eat and shower. As a result, I felt much
better during the second morning's runs. I struggled at times during the rest
of the second day, but generally felt OK. In the end, I put in over 44 hours,
which is good. But it was very unpleasant too much of the time.

My sense is that some of the trouble is physical conditioning. I've put on a
little weight, haven't been exercising as much, and haven't been eating as well
as I could. It's not a huge difference from past years, but enough to have an
effect. While I have many techniques to combat fatigue, I really think physical
conditioning is the most effective, and of course the most difficult to
implement consistently. Note to self: take care of body.

Nonetheless, after wimping out and quitting early last year, partly due to an
equipment problem that seemed worse than it really was, I was happy to go the
distance this year. The station performed flawlessly, less some silly cockpit
errors like thinking one channel of my headphones wasn’t working, then after
several minutes of futile troubleshooting realizing that split audio was on and
the volume on the second radio was all the way down! Such is the way the brain
works after not sleeping for more than 35 hours.

Band-by-band:

After a record five-year absence, 15 finally opened strong here in the North
Country, but 80 and 160 plunged into the depths after years of spectacular
propagation. The Contest Gods giveth, and they taketh away.

160m: I did quite poorly on topband mults compared to the last few years.
Certainly propagation played a big role. With sunspots slowly on the rise,
we're undoubtedly past the low band peak. It was great while it lasted, but it
looks like we're going back to tough sledding. Thanks to the beverage I could
hear many Europeans, but because I only have a trapped inverted vee for
transmit, many CQed in my face. I keep meaning to try a sloped vertical off the
tower, but once again didn't get around to it this year. It's problematic
because the 160/80 trapped vee would have to come down, and then I'd need
another antenna for 80 (i.e., a 4-square on 80 is a pre-condition to a better
antenna on 160.) No matter what I do, I'm unlikely to keep up with K1DG on 160.
His location and antennas are downright magical.

80m: Slightly better. I was able to run a few times, but the QSO count was
definitely down. Mults were down from my best years, though I managed to get
most of the available zones (well, not compared with the multis, but compared
with other SOs.) This year I tried diversity reception on 80, using one of the
transmit antennas and the beverage. It seemed to work pretty well, though not
as dramatic an improvement as on 40 (see below.) As I've said countless times,
I need a 4-sqaure on 80 to compete with the big boys. I did some early planning
this year, and acquired all the radial wire (several miles worth), but I'm still
pondering different ways to build the elements. It can't be a wire array, so
it's got to be guyed or freestanding elements in our open field. It's also got
to pass visual muster with my XYL, which is the compromise that most affects
what I can do with antennas (hey, I've made a lot of headway on that score over
the years :-). 

40m: This is my best band, thanks to the full-size 2-el Cal-Av 2D-40A at 110',
a full-size 4-square with 60 radials per element, and the K3's diversity
reception. With an F/B of at least 20 dB, the Cal-Av consistently outperforms
my old 40-2CD. I can start working 40 earlier and can run it longer. I can
usually hold a frequency in the Extra portion of the band. I feel loud. When
the pileups are big and/or conditions are tough, I switch in the 4-square using
the K3's diversity reception, and the copy improves dramatically -- I can
separate calls better and fading is much less of an issue. I can also instantly
switch RX direction. This is truly a powerful combination.

But here near the bottom of the cycle, I still can't run 40 to open the
contest. Once again, I CQed for a few minutes to test that theory, then quickly
converted to pure S&P for the first three hours. The rate, about 75 Qs for the
first hour, was up from last year, but still well below where I need to be with
S&P on an untouched, wide-open band. However, I worked many excellent mults
during the first and second hour, including a number of key African countries
that I've missed in past years. I worked 18 zones and 68 countries on 40 in the
first two hours, and had 21 zones and 93 countries by dawn Saturday. I'm sure
that's the best opening night mult performance I've had on 40. 40 led 20 in
mults almost to the end of the contest, when 20 pulled ahead for a couple of
hours, but by the end of the contest I had 113 countries on both bands and 40
won the mult battle by one zone, 33 vs 32. This was far and away the best I've
ever done with mults on 40.  

20m: 20 is my second-best band, thanks to the 3-stack of 4-el SteppIRs. Really
it's a 2-stack. The bottom antenna doesn't help and probably hurts a little, so
I usually keep it out of the stack. It may be a different story at the peak of
the sunspot cycle, when the angles get really high, but not now. 20 was about
the usual, with massive numbers of stations packed in all the way from
14.000-14.150. It was a little better this year when 15 opened, finally giving
respite after years of only one band being open during the morning runs. 

My QSOs on 20 are a little lower than they should be. While propagation on 20
was generally very good, with the exception of some nasty atmospheric or band
noise Sunday afternoon, and the opening rate was good both days (141 and 135
respectively), the band opened a little later than expected, at about 1145z.
This compressed the amount of time I was able to spend at high rate on 20
before jumping to 15. I think this cost me as much as 200 QSOs and I was
worried that the mults were lagging pretty badly after the first day. Zones
were OK at 27, but I only had 86 countries. With 99 countries on 40, I was
worried that I had missed a bunch of countries on 20 and might have trouble
breaking 100. This turned out to be a non-issue, as new mults on 20 came
rolling in all day Sunday, and I ended with 113. 

The big problem was QSOs on 20. I was *way* behind the leaders. I suspect this
was somewhat due to the aforementioned late opening here causing me to leave
high rate on 20 for 15, and fatigue making it more difficult than usual to
optimize rate on 20.

QRM was bad enough that I ran more often higher in the band than usual. Seems
to me that more and more stations are trying to pack into the Extra-class
portion of the band, especially loud Europeans. My memory may be faulty on
this, but my recollection is that 10 years ago more QRM came from the US than
Europe. Now it's the other way around.

On a technical note, trading the 5-pole 500Hz roofing filters for 8-pole 400 Hz
filters made a significant difference in the K3's immunity to QRM. That's
contrary to what the theory says about roofing filters in conjunction with
DSP-based IF filtering, but it's the reality. Previously I was bothered a lot
by loud stations above my frequency, even a few hundred Hz away. The thumping
would get really annoying. This time it wasn't a big issue.

I did have some trouble picking out calls when the pileups reached their
maximum depth on 20, and really didn't have time to play with the K3's AGC
parameters. At times the 10-minute rate meter got pretty close to 200/hr, and
the pileup seemed like a wall of white noise. I should have tried switching off
AGC and riding RF Gain, but I forgot to try that. I ended up picking out partial
calls, which I hate to do, but there seemed to be no choice. 

15m: Ah, how nice to have 15m back! Checking my records, it's been five years
since I've been able to run 15m to any great extent, and seven years since I
got anywhere close to 100 countries. I worked the same number of zones as K5ZD
and K1DG, and was within spitting distance on countries. QSOs weren't terribly
far off, either, though this cost me a fair number of QSOs on 20. But all in
all I was happy that my antennas and location weren't at the disadvantage
that's prevailed for so long. As I've only been contesting seriously since
1997, it's taken over a decade to learn that my latitude is a significant
disadvantage on 15 and 10 during the declining phase of the sunspot cycle. The
3-stack should help, but I'm not sure there's a good solution short of a much
larger tower and stack (which isn't going to happen.)

It's possible that I've missed some short 15m openings to Europe in the past
few years. This year I made sure to check the band frequently. I also moved my
LP-PAN from the run radio, where I wasn't using it, to the S&P radio. The
PowerSDR-IF panadapter and waterfall display provided a great way to instantly
check the entire band for activity. I'm pretty sure I jumped to 15 at about the
best time to catch the opening, and I was able to use the scope to check the
band in other directions throughout the day. Should have set that up long ago.

10m: Dead, dead, dead. I checked the band every time before I checked 15, using
the 3-stack whenever I could. I didn't hear a thing and the waterfall showed
absolutely nothing, not even pee-weak signals. I finally caught NQ4I CQing and
got zone 5, then later caught another US station for zone 4. Finally, on Sunday
afternoon I caught HC8GR and LU for zones 10 and 13. That's it. Judging from how
the Northeast multis did with someone sitting at the 10m station for hours and
hours, there must have been very short bursts of propagation and activity that
I missed. K1ZD and K1DG caught some of them. They had far fewer mults than the
multis, of course, but more than I had. Not sure why, though K1DG had only a
little over half Randy's total, and Doug and I are at about the same latitude.
I believe Doug has one or two 10m monobanders to supplement the SteppIR stack,
so that might have been the difference. Either that, or I didn't check 10 as
often as I thought. Really can't wait until this band opens up again to see if
that levels the playing field at all. 

Asia and Pacific

The big gap in the zone map is between 20 and 30. Specifically, I missed 23,
24, 26, and 28. Oddly enough, JAs were plentiful on 20 and workable on 80 and
40. Otherwise, the only other deep Asian country I worked was VU on 40 and 80.
Usually I judge propagation by how many UA9/UA0 stations call in. When
propagation is good, Asiatic Russians flow through the pileups all day. But
this year I didn't work zone 17 until 1825z Saturday, didn't work zone 18 until
0312z Sunday and didn't work zone 19 until 2219z Sunday. In all, I worked only
about 20 Asiatic Russians in the contest, all of them on 40 and 20.

There were a couple of nice long path openings to various parts of the world. I
encountered one strange path when I worked VK6AA at 50 degrees on 40m at 2000z.
I checked all around the compass for a louder peak, but didn't find one. That's
neither the short path nor long path to zone 29. What is it? Did anyone else run
into this one?

Highlights

- Working lots of mults
- Personal best zones and countries on 40
- Running Europe on 15m at long last
- Working TX3A on 80 (the only band!)
- Working VU2PAI at 1916z on 40
- Working VK6AA at 2000z on 40
- Working lots of Africans
- Busting the pileup on a weak 5R8ZO on 20, then finding him all alone on 40
- Giving up only 59 mults to the top score. My average has been 135.

Lowlights

- Falling way short in QSOs, especially on 20
- No 10
- Still not being able to run 40 at the start
- Only fair propagation on 80
- Terrible propagation on 160
- Stations that don't identify for long periods (should be DQed)
- Europeans who plopped down on my frequency without asking and refused to
move
- Frequent horrible fatigue

I think that point about station identification bears repeating. Others have
commented on how annoying this is, and I want to add my loud agreement. I
frequently ran into stations that didn't identify for several minutes, if at
all. Sometimes I or others had to send CL? repeatedly to get an ID. I'm sure
that QRM didn't help the rate. In some instances, the station never identified
and I had to move on. As K5ZD said, not everyone is using packet. Besides,
anyone who relies on packet to identify a station, especially on Sunday, is
asking for big score deductions. I do enough packet at KC1XX in the SSB
contests to know that. Personally, I think the situation has gotten bad enough
that the major sponsors need to crack down and institute strict rules on
identification. Some discussion is necessary about an adequate identification
frequency, but it shouldn't be necessary to wait for minutes to hear the call.


Philosophy/Psychology:

If this is the King of Contests, and my clear favorite, then why do I feel so
awful for so much of the contest?

This is the imponderable mystery of CQ WW. There's no other contest that
features the best propagation windows of the year, huge participation, massive
amounts of DX, the best competition, double multipliers and short exchanges.
There's nothing like a high-rate run in CQ WW, and nothing like picking off
mults in rapid succession or breaking a big packet pileup to capture a
barely-audible rare mult from halfway around the world. And when a rare mult
unexpectedly calls in -- pure bliss. Many of us build our stations with WW in
mind, and look forward to it all year.

But surely I'm not alone in experiencing many hours where I feel horrible from
lack of sleep, monotony, hours of low rate, poor propagation, the headphones
pressing into my ears, and constant unpleasant static and noise. There are many
times when I consider quitting and many hours where I can't wait for the pain to
end. Sometimes I get headaches, sometimes I'm nauseated, sometimes my body aches
to move more than a few inches, and sometimes I lose consciousness for a second
or two as my brain tries to assert its will to sleep. There's nothing quite
like the fight to put in more than 40 hours in the chair, and it gets really
difficult when I push for more than 42 hours.

But invariably I start to feel better after the first 24 hours, and especially
good during the last few hours when the end is in sight and I'm totally focused
on pushing up the score as high as possible. For me, the most fun is when the
score starts escalating rapidly after the morning runs on the second day and
the DX seems to creep out of the woodwork. My efficiency actually increases and
my hands fly from keyboard to radio to rotor controller to stack match, pushing
buttons, spinning dials and turning antennas, paralleling antennas pointing in
multiple directions, digging everything out of the ether that I can. There's
nothing like it, and it's the last thing I remember before the end of the
contest.

I feel terrific when it's over and typically don't sleep for several hours as I
come down from the high. Then I crash for 10-12 hours and wake up feeling like
there's cotton in my head. Then I re-live the contest by reading score and
comment posts on 3830, and doing my own writeup, and suddenly wish the contest
was still going. It reminds me of the theory that women continue to want to
have children because something wipes out their memory of labor pains. Well, CW
WW pain isn't nearly of that magnitude, but it seems like the same mechanism is
at work. For example, last year K5ZD announced his retirement from 40+ hour
contesting. But he was back at it this year. He announced his retirement again
at the end of this year's contest. But will he sit out the best contest in the
world next year? We'll see.

For me, the love-hate relationship continues. See you next year.

73, Dick WC1M

Antennas:

160M  -  trapped vee @90'
 80M  -  delta loop @75, trapped vee @90'
 40M  -  Cal-Av 2D-40A @110', 4-square
 20M  -  4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 4-el @72'
 15M  -  4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 5-el @50'
 10M  -  4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50'
 
Tower#1:   Cal-AV 2D-40A, 4-el SteppIRs, 160/80 trapped vee
770-MDP:   Force-12 EF-420
AB-577 #1: Force-12 EF-515
AB-577 #2: Force-12 C3E

Delta loop hung from a tree

dual 580' beverage aimed 20/220 degrees

Equipment:

Elecraft K3 + Alpha 87A, Elecraft K3 + LP-PAN + Acom 2000A, Writelog,
LP-BRIDGE, PowerSDR-IF, W5XD+ keyer/switcher, homebrew Windows antenna
switching/tuning software ("AntennaMaster"), Hamation Relay Drivers, TopTen and
KK1L SO2R switches, Green Heron and Hy-Gain rotor controllers, microHam Stack
Switch and StackMax


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