[3830] ARRLDX CW N4ZR SOAB(A) HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: N4ZR
Operator(s): N4ZR
Station: N4ZR

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): 16
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    1     1
   80:   12    10
   40:  394    63
   20: 1065    94
   15:   20    14
   10:           
-------------------
Total: 1492   182  Total Score = 811,356

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

Knowing that my neck problems would prevent anything like a full-time operation,
I decided to live a normal weekend life, except for operating sessions in the
morning and afternoon.  That meant stopping for lunch and dinner, almost no
operating during hours of darkness (early Sunday AM only), and only about 16
hours of operating time.  I decided to use the contest mainly as a chance to
test various tactics for using CW Skimmer - I did not use an internet cluster.

The results were pretty gratifying.  My overall rate of 93.5 QSOs/hour is the
best I've ever sustained in an ARRL DX contest, and I had a 147 hour Sunday
morning on 20.  Skimmer caught the brief 15 meter opening on Saturday morning,
and I used it in vain looking for another on Sunday.  Most of the time, Skimmer
was on the same band as my second radio, looking for S&P QSOs (and particularly
multipliers).  That allowed it to work while I was running on the other radio,
and it found more stations than I could possibly work, given the run rates and
my limited SO2R skills.

However, the most useful tactic, I found, was to take the "opportunity" of
losing a run frequency to survey my current run band and see if there were
enough new running stations to warrant a quick S&P sweep of the band. 
Typically, 2 minutes spent with Skimmer on an open band would produce spots of
200-275 stations (most of them dupes, of course). I would then swap radios
(Alt-F5 in N1MM Logger), and move quickly up or down the band working the
non-dupes.  Doing this, it was common to see my rate-meter at 150+ for the last
10 QSOs, which made S&P this way almost as productive as running on a good
frequency.  On Sunday afternoon, I did a lot of this, trying to boost my
multiplier total, and found it interesting to see the new waves of CQers show
up on a given band, confirming what we know from experience to be true.

The European pileups were horrific - they sounded like packet pileups to me,
judging by the sudden onset, but looking at DX Summit I was surprised by how
few times I was actually spotted (though I wonder if some European clusters are
limited in their spot distribution to national boundaries).  Perhaps it was just
the ruckus on the run frequency that attracts people. 

Anyway, a good time.


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