[3830] TBDC KV4FZ Single Op HP

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                    Stew Perry Topband Challenge

Call: KV4FZ
Operator(s): KV4FZ
Station: KV4FZ

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Virgin Islands
Operating Time (hrs): 13

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 412  Total Score = 3,624

Club: 

Comments:

Plenty of preparation for the Stew Perry Contest on Friday with Beverage repairs
and new coax feeds. Plan to concentrate of QRP, LP Europes and of course
distance DX for some points all to see if I could move up the score ladder a
bit.  Since this my favorite 160 meter contests it certainly was worthy of some
TLC in the preparation department.....but it just didn't turn out the way I had
planned for.

 A multiple push button RX antenna switch was installed terminating all unused
cables.  Now I could select 10 beverages by pushing a button rather than
racking around a bunch of non terminating rotary coax swicthes. Be able to
instantly switch to any direction with out going through 6 to 8 other
directions seemed like the way to make things better for a contest. 

Double large toroids were installed to lower the common mode noise pickup.  All
antennas were swept with my MFJ-269 and each was tested for F/B on area AM
stations.  I though I was going to have a better chance at improving my
score.......but I forgot that Mr. Murphy had different plans. (1) Conditions
were somewhere between weird to poor. The day before 4Z4 and ZC4 were well
heard here but during the contest absolutely nothing from the Eastern Med,
Africa, nor even past the Ural Mountains.  Only one contact in South America
with CE1/K7CA with the exception of P4 only a few hundred miles south of me.
But where was Central America? Not a one here for me. There were some small
openings to Europe but not the regular layer after layer 100 watters...only big
guns could be worked. My most productive Beverage to the N/W for the mainland
suddenly quite two hours after I started.  The North and West antennas had to
be used until a lull allowed me to stumbled into the field with a flashlight
and see what I could do to hear some very important QRP stations.  Finding
nothing wrong it was back to the shack form some more ear piercing QRN with a
passing front.  A few Eastern Euro 20 pointers improved my spirit a bit...but
was the extreme DX in the N/E direction?  Where were the hundreds of contest
loving stations from the Baltic region?  I said conditions sounded weird but
hard to explain. Even normally strong East Coast big guns were just above the
noise and the Midwest wasn't any better even though the N/W Beverage started to
work. Some stations had a back scatter or multipath like quality w/o reports of
an auroral disturbance.

Just before daylight ZL3IX called me for a 28 pointer followed a few minutes
later by ZL1AZE. Sure could have used a dozen VK's, even one, but that was not
to be.  The last precious hour where I was hoping for at least a few JA's
resulted only in a few contacts. It didn't happened and when my only QSo after
about 100 cq's was a 1 pointer in KP4 I knew it was time to quit. 

The pre-Stew was nice this year but the Stew was mediocre in conditions.....so
how about a post Stew in the Spring?

Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ


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