[3830] NAQP CW W6YX M/2 LP

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                    North American QSO Party, CW

Call: W6YX
Operator(s): K6UFO,ND2T,N7MH,W6LD,W6RK
Station: W6YX

Class: M/2 LP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 12

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  114    35
   80:  320    55
   40:  373    52
   20:  553    60
   15:  321    42
   10:    1     1
-------------------
Total: 1682   245  Total Score = 412,090

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Team: 

Comments:

This is the first recent NAQP of any sort that 15 meters wasn't open at the
beginning to somewhere other than just local stations.

This meant that 20 meters was THE band at the beginning and rates were terrific
in the first hour - 88 Q's in the first half hour and 158 Q's total on 20 in
that hour.  15 opened around 1830Z, netting our second mult, NP4Z, and 5
minutes later the band was open to the northeast states and eastern Canada.

Over the next several hours 15 meters opened to the southeast and then
propagation moved to the west.  We missed a few of the 7-land states, both
Dakotas, and a few others on 15.

After moving K2LE from 20 to 15 he suggested a move to 10, so we tried it.  We
didn't work K2LE, but did work Jerry, K6III, and ended up spending 10 minutes
CQing on 10 meters with no other answers.  We heard other locals CQing on 10
later and could hear some beacons in CA, but nothing was ever heard outside of
the state so we didn't go there again.

40 was wide open when we moved there shortly before 2300Z.  40 went long quite
early here, though, so later in the evening there were very few stations to be
heard on 40.

We probably stayed on 20 for too long, working JA's and UA0's as our last Q's
there after the band was dead to NA.  80 was open when we moved there at 0030Z,
but we couldn't really get much of a rate CQing then and ended up S&P'ing for a
while until the band opened better.  We stayed on 80 for the rest of the
contest.  I was amazed that we worked F5IN with low power on 80.

W6LD and N6CCH spent most of the day fixing feedlines and working on the 160M
transmit antenna.  John, W6LD, then did most of the 160 operating to see how
well the C antenna works with the feedpoint raised from 10 feet to 30 feet.  We
still could hear many stations that were not able to hear us.  We were hearing
so well on 160 that we never went back to 40 meters in the last 2 and a half
hours since we always had a bandmap full of unworked mults and stations on 160.
 We heard 9 mults that we didn't work on 160.

Congrats to all the other M/2 stations for the great scores.

-Mike, N7MH


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