[3830] WPX CW DL3YM(@DF2PY) SOAB HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: DL3YM
Operator(s): DL3YM
Station: DF2PY

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 35.8
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:   18
   80:  240
   40: 1065
   20: 1315
   15:  122
   10:    2
------------
Total: 2762  Prefixes = 903  Total Score = 6,834,807

Club: Rhein Ruhr DX Association

Comments:

It has been a long time since I last entered one of my favourite contests with
such an amount of accumulated fatigue, caused by job challenges and family
obligations. As I realized I simply could not switch myself into contesting
mode I decided to restrict myself to the following goals for the weekend:

a) have fun
b) chase my personal best score from last year
c) work on my SO2R-capabilities and have the main radio running all of my
operating time

Guess all goals were achieved:
the usual pre contest pizza dinner together with the boys from DR4A and my host
DF2PY was good fun. In fact is was so much fun that we added a wine tasting at
Wolf’s place which lasted right up to the contest start. While I did refrain
from trying too much of the good stuff there was no pre contest nap this time.
Operating strategy was kept as simple as possible: run on 40 / 20 whenever
possible, never tune the main radio to one of the bands at the edge of the
spectrum. That is the reason why all QSOs on 10, 15 and 160 were made on the
second radio. I figure that 10 and 15 were fun, yet I did not care much about
them as long as 20 produced good rates. In fact it did all weekend long. 20 was
good enough that it was hard to leave for running on 40, which I did especially
on Sunday evening because you simply must not loose those precious 6 pointers
there. First time I could use the new 3 el wire beam fixed on NA in a WPX on
40, and I believe this thing performed very well, giving access to at least one
more level of workable stations.
There were no hardware problems at all this year which is testimony to Wolf’s
exceptional engineering capabilities reaching a steady state of reliability for
a set up that has grown to quite some complexity over the years, yet still
relies on a lot of homebrewed components.
All in all I found condx very similar to last year, in any case far from being
spectacular. Unfortunately fatigue caught up on me in the end and for the first
time ever I messed up my breaks, resulting in losing some 10 minutes operating
time.
Thanks all for a most enjoyable weekend.
Special thanks to Wolf and family who made me feel like being at home, to my
XYL for letting me play radio and to my two boys for not burning down our house
while I was away, hi.


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