[3830] SS CW K4XD SO Unlimited HP
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Mon Nov 9 11:23:48 PST 2009
ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: K4XD
Operator(s): K4XD
Station: K4XD
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 23
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 1
80: 400
40: 243
20: 207
15: 38
10: 0
------------
Total: 889 Sections = 80 Total Score = 142,240
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
Why I love Sweepstakes:
a) I can run stations!
b) No other contests seem to generate as much team spirit within our contest
club (PVRC). There are other competitions to be sure -- that's why it's a
contest club -- but this is the World Series.
c) I love the contest-within-a-contest -- the Clean Sweep!
d) I love the contest-within-a-contest-within-a-contest -- working VY1.
d) Twenty-four hours out of thirty is a great time limit. I doubt I'll ever
work a full 48 hour contest, yet I know I can work the 24 hours of SS. And I
can do it while taking 6 hours off. Neat!
e) Strategies matter in every contest but somehow the choices in SS seem to
have more influence on the outcome for me. Should I go down to 80 early? Run
or S&P? Blaze along at 30 wpm CW for maximum rate or slow down so the casual
guys don't pass you by?
Things I love least about Sweepstakes:
a) Those times when I feel like I've fished the pond dry -- CQ, CQ, CQ, is
anybody out there?!
b) Getting motivated to go another two hours at 1AM when things are slowing
down, I've been at it for 9 hours, my eyelids are drooping and my BIC wants to
be a BIB.
c) Sunday afternoon. See (a).
d) For some reason, I'm always more tempted to make ill-fated last minute
"improvements" to my setup on Saturday. I think it's because the contest
doesn't start until 4PM local time, which gives
me more time to kill and come up with "bright ideas."
e) Missing a Clean Sweep by 1 section!
I don't know about the rest of you, but for some reason, this contest gets me
more pumped up than any other. Maybe it's the PVRC cheerleading in advance,
maybe it's the feeling that with a little more BIC or effort or wpm on the
keyer I could add to last year's best score, or maybe it's just the fact that I
have most of Saturday to get worked up before it starts. All-in-all, it's a
blast.
So once again this year, on what will become a beautiful sunny Fall Saturday
morning, we zoom into the shack at K4XD and find the licensee K4XD hard at work
violating every pre-contest rule:
Get plenty of sleep in advance!
Here I am at the radio at 6AM, chasing DX and swapping emails with another
SS'er who should be getting rested up.
Test your equipment in advance and then LEAVE IT ALONE!
I wonder whether I should use my SDR-1000 as the second rig in SO2R mode, or
set up a new antenna, hook it up to Skimmer, use SkimScan to automatically
schedule it to roam the bands and find spots, and use my FT-857 as the second
rig? The SDR-1000 is all set up and working in SO2R mode. Conclusion: Build
the Skimmer station, of course!
I found a Par Electronics 10-20-40 QRP end-loaded wire antenna that I could
string up in a tree in the front yard -- I figured it was far enough away from
the back yard antennas that I probably wouldn't roast the SDR-1000's front-end
if I let it run with Skimmer even on the bands where I was transmitting. Up
goes the antenna, plug it into the SDR-1000, hmmm, doesn't seem quite as
sensitive as the inverted vee's in the backyard but it is picking up most of
the same signals and Skimmer is busily pulling call signs out of the band.
Neat! OK, now I need to feed the Telnet output of Skimmer into WriteLog...
but wait a minute, I can only feed one packet cluster into WriteLog at a time
and I wanted to hook up to W3LPL's too. Ahh, you can use K1TTT's WinTelnetX to
read as many different telnet cluster sources as you want and then hook WriteLog
up to it. Cool, it's working.
Hmmm, when I click on the bandmap in WriteLog, the tuned frequency seems to be
a little off from where the station is. I start experimenting and find that by
changing a setting in Skimmer, the spot frequency coming from Skimmer changes.
But when I get it "right" for 40M, it is off for 20M, and vice-versa! #$@,
darn computers. Fiddled with this for an hour and decided I was not going to
have a fix before the contest started, so my new front yard ornament (or so I
told the XYL as I put up the wire) will have to go unused this time.
OK, switch the SDR-1000 back to the SO2R "real" antenna switch and give it a
whirl, everything seems to be working, so go chill for a couple of hours and
get ready for the main event.
30 minutes to go, so queue the theme from "Rocky" ... "feeling LOUD
now!!!!...."
Tuning around 20M and the band seems hot -- good s/n ratio on signals, nothing
too strange like the "echo" on 20M last year.
Funny how so many guys get the urge to get on 20M a half hour before
Sweepstakes and call CQ a lot. It kinda reminds me of when the pepperoni pizza
comes out on the lunch buffet -- one guys casually walks up and takes two
slices, then two guys walk briskly up and grab two more each, and suddenly half
the restaurant's tables are empty as everyone stampedes the table before the
last slice is gone!
Last minute review of strategy -- should I do the S&P on 20 thing as usual --
which typically leaves me feeling depressed after three hours when my NR? NR?
is 75 and the guys I'm S&P'ing are in the hundreds... or try 40 where it may be
less crowded and easier to run, but with fewer takers, or just horn in on 20 and
claim my turf? Decisions, decisions...
2059 and it's roll... OK, I'm gonna run 20. #$#, a minute gone by already and
still looking for a slot. Now I wish I had gone up to the buffet table before
the mob. OK, there's a sort-of slot at 14035. Call CQ, work a K4, and then
get wiped by QRM. Maybe up higher? I tune up with my filters at 400 Hz,
looking for a spot where there are no readable signals in that bandwidth. Of
course there will be some splatter, but I try to find 400 Hz of room with no
one else calling. Crap, it's 2107 already and I'm still tuning, with only one
Q in the log! I'm all the way up to 14061 before I find a spot. Well, let's
give it a whirl and hope some people decide to start scanning 20M from the top
down instead of the bottom up.
Not bad, as I settle down I start getting the Left Coasters parade with a
couple of midwesterners thrown in for good measure: SJV, ORG, AZ, EB, then a
WI, SCV, NM, that's nice, CO, STX, NTX, SV, MI, EPA, where'd that come
from??!?, WWA, SJV, OR... and you guys are gonna kill me, but QSO number 24 was
NL calling me! Of course I had no clue that would be the "hard section" to
find.
I had to slide up to 14066 after the first few Q's, but there I stayed until
2304, and managed to find myself with 108 Q's and 39 mults in the log, not a
barn burner but for me, a better than average start.
In the midst of that run, I managed to try a little bit of S&P on 40M on the
FlexRadio SDR-1000, with awful results. I love the receiver on the SDR-1000 --
the software filters are very impressive -- but it is not a great CW
transmitting radio, at least not the way I have it configured. Probably need
to figure out how to turn break-in off altogether, because somehow the rapid
switching between TX and RX creates a horrible cacophony of clicks and pops in
my headphones and apparently is sending messed up CW as well, as people were
responding to my "K4XD" with either "?" or "K5XD" or "CQ, CQ -- whoever is
calling me now, please buy a real radio and in the meantime stop calling me!"
Abandoning the SDR-1000 as my second radio, I tried hooking up the FT-857, my
normal SO2R
second rig, in its place. Murphy, Murphy, I thought I had you banished from
the shack? I thought I've seen every kind of fat-finger induced malfunction,
but here was a new one. The FT-857 simply refused to change mode from LSB. I
could send it commands from WriteLog to change frequency, worked fine. But
tell it to switch to CW and no go. Hit the mode buttons on the radio, no
cigar. It was stuck in LSB! Where's that manual... precious minutes and Q's
are flying by... OK, got the manual. I'll just reset the radio, no time to
figure out what is happening. Hold down the HOME button while powering on...
OK, it's reset. Still no response to the mode buttons! Too bad it isn't SS
SSB, at least it would be usable on 40 and 80!
So... after 10 minutes of fiddling, I decided this was going to be a SO1R
effort, sans local Skimmer. Enough with technology, back to radio...
So, it's 2300, and I'm S&P'ing on 40 trying to get the feel for the band.
CQ'ing is generating a little interest but it's not as good a rate as 20. More
S&P, I remember that a common mistake is waiting too long to go to 80. Is it
time yet? 2356, and I definitely recall people talking about moving to 80 even
before 0000, so down we go. Based on my experience on 20 vs. 40, where running
= good rate and S&P = not so good rate, I decided to find a spot on 80 and
park. And park I did, sitting about in the middle of the CW band for the next
three hours. Other than a surprise appearance from LAX at 0224, it was "East
of the Mississippi River" time. 64 sections in the log by 0300, and so far I
hadn't chased any of them via the cluster notes, and almost all of them came to
me while running, as the wise men of SS hath foretold.
The rate was slowing down and the band map beckoned with some light blue call
signs (unworked in WriteLog), so I decided a little S&P was in order. From the
start, my goal was to beat last year's results, which was around 840 Q'q, and I
made the mental note that in 24 hours I needed to keep the rate above 40 to get
closer to 1000. So whenever the rate started to get close to 40, that was my
trigger to re-assess what I was doing and decide if it was time to try
something different.
S&P'ing up 80M helped me find NNY and MS, and I managed to keep the rate above
50 / hr with a bandmap full of unworked CQ'ers. From midnight until 3AM, I
managed to keep the rate decent while alternating S&P'ing 80 and 40. One quick
look at 160M showed me a VI station there so hopped down and worked him first
call. By 3AM things were slowing down, including me, and I like the feel of
the Sunday morning bands around sunrise, but only after a couple of hours
sleep!
So it was time to grab a couple hours sleep with 75 sections and 496 Q's in the
log -- yes, I bagged it that close to 500!
I set the alarm for 7AM and found myself awake at 6:30, so reheated some coffee
from yesterday (yuck, but no time to make fresh!) and headed back to my cell, I
mean to the shack! I think the seat was still warm. 80 was open to everywhere
- working NC, SDG, SFL, MI, and EMA in the span of 15 minutes.
I was impressed with the strength of QRP signals from all over. In past years
there were numerous times where I regretted even starting to work a QRP station
after what seemed like an eternity of requesting repeats. Why is it that the
letters "nr" always come through loud and clear but the static crashes and QSB
invariably take out the same digit of a three digit serial number?!
This year, there were only a couple of Q's like that where I had to throw in
the towel. Either the bands or my ears were better -- I'm betting on the
bands! Of course there is always the occasional QRP station that seems to fade
up dramatically when you ask for a repeat. I didn't realize they had turbo
buttons on those rigs...
After about 45 minutes of admiring 80M, I decided at 1230 it was time to check
out 40 This single radio thing was driving me nuts! I guess I could learn to
use two VFO's on the Icom 756pII but that seems to be begging Murphy to have me
be transmitting CQ on 40 while listening on 80 and wondering where everyone
went. I did a little S&P on 40 with my 400 Hz filter setting and found a spot
at 7045 and settled in for a nice run of about 40 stations, including a call
from an SB station, which I was to learn later would be another heartbreaker
section for many. The randomness of this thing is part of the fun!
OK, I know we're not supposed to mix religion with ham radio but this is too
good to leave out. At 8:45AM local I decided I would take a break and go to
church with the family, with 76 sections in the log. Got back from church and
settled in at the dials at about 11:30AM local, and I kid you not, I worked the
remaining 4 sections back-to-back! Four QSO's in a row (yes, I did take
advantage of cluster spots) yielded three N's and a B: ND, NT, NV, and BC.
Sweep! I am now officially making church attendance a mandatory part of my SS
experience.
ND was easy, Eric had a wicked pileup but I got through on the third call. I
admire Eric's patient discipline and handling of the unruly mob. When he says
"K1?" he really does ignore all the calls from W6's, K2's, VE3's etc. and
repeats "K1?" until he gets the next letter of the call, and sticks with it
until he's made the Q. So many ops seem to succomb to the guy who comes back
to every request with his call, and that signals to the rest of the gang that
this is going to be a case of might makes right, and may the most obnoxious
caller win the prize. Nice work Eric, and I like your CK too!
BC and NV turned out to be one of several but the one that gives you the mult
is the one that counts. I even had the VE8 call me later while CQ'ing on 15M,
so you never know.
I've conditioned my XYL that the Sweep is Good, and she even pretends to be
delighted enough to do a "Radio High Five!" and ask me if I'm going to get
"another mug." Does the bear sleep in the woods? Make room on the mug tree!
Getting the Sweep always takes a bit of the pressure off, and I love getting it
"done" with the CW SS so it's not as much of a nail biter in the SSB. Still
like to hunt sections, and yes, I realize I probably obsess too much over the
Sweep, but I've managed to hit it every year since getting my license a few
years ago and I don't want to break the streak.
So with section 80 in the log at 1648, yes, it took 18 minutes to find and log
those four sections, I tried a little run on 20. Didn't seem to have much life
and there were plenty of unworked spots on the band map so I went to town on
those. Despite dire warnings that SS is an "80-40-20" contest and 15 and 10
are for suckers (I'll never learn), I took a peek at 15M and the 756 bandscope
was just hopping with signals -- I couldn't resist calling just a few!
Although 20M was pretty clean sounding this weekend, 15M was even quieter and
having all signal / no noise is such a sweet sound to my ears that I was
hooked. I figured a little run couldn't hurt anything, could it? After all,
as long as that rate is above 45 or so... so I camped out on 21035 for half an
hour and enjoyed a stress-free run of West coast stations, including that VE8
call-in and several MT's -- seems like MT and WY are less rare lately...?
Good!
After an hour of 15M, I bid adieu to the beautiful music of CW sans QRN and
headed back to 20M, figuring that "density of callers" was what I needed to
keep the Sunday afternoon blues from settling in. I found a nice spot at 14030
and logged an hour and another 50 Q's up until 1930. At that point, the three
hours of sleep and many hours of radio was starting to get to me and I bugged
out for 45 minutes of snooze time, even though between church and sleep I had
almost used up my 6 hour allotment. But back to 20M at 2020 (really!) and the
band was really interesting, I was working AK one minute and VA the next.
Backscatter? Some of the MDC's and VA's were loud, and the beam was pointed
west.
At this point I hadn't spent all that many hours on 40M yet so figured I might
be missing some stations that liked to hang out there, so at 2050 I decided to
head South figuratively speaking and see if I could generate some interest on
40. A little bit of S&P but 90% CQ'ing, mostly above 7050, until 2309. I am
still trying to decide what CW rate yields the most Q's in the aggregate.
Clearly if you run too fast you scare some people off, but if you go too slowly
I think you also have trouble building a pileup because people don't want to
hang around that long waiting for you. I mostly CQ'd at 22WPM, although if
things were getting hot I would crank it up to 25WPM CQ'ing and if someone
answered me faster I would try to match their speed with my reply. Then I'd
keep CQ'ing at 25WPM for a bit, but if no one showed up for a minute or two, I
would turn it back down to 22 again. Yet, nagging at the back of my mind is
this feeling that if I just cranked it to 27WPM or so and stayed there, over
the course of time I'd get more Q's in the log. What do you think?
For the whole contest, I had WriteLog hooked up to post scores to
getscores.org, and for a lot of the contest I was the top scoring poster to the
SOA/HP category. Of course from the numbers I was copying from others, I had no
illusions that I was leading any "real" race. Nonetheless, it was fun, and I
kept swapping first and second place with another poster. It was until the
last two hours, when he managed to keep a 10 to 15 Q lead, and got his sweep
too, and stayed in the lead to the end, actually widening the gap while I was
desperately trying to scrape a few more Q's from a pretty dried up fishing
hole. My left brain kept saying, "RUN, RUN, you'll get more Q's if you RUN!"
but my right brain would get impatient after two minutes of CQ'ing into the
static and if there were three unworked spots on the band map, I couldn't
resist seeing if that would get better results.
Net, the last couple of hours were SLOW and I didn't seem to get that "last two
hour pop" that I've had in the past. I'm still scratching my head trying to
figure out how to break that 1000 Q barrier. Probably need to get more adept
at SO2R (oh yeah, and get SO2R working a few days before the 'test and leave it
alone!), get a steel plated BIC, and run, run, run Forrest!
Surprisingly to me, even though like many have reported I found my interest
flagging around 2300, by 0100, even though the rate was in the cellar, I found
myself thinking "rats, it will all be over in two hours!" instead of "is this
thing done yet?!"
But, like all good things, the 2009 CW SS came to an end, the bands filled to
the brim with bouncing CW signals became eerily quiet at the tick of the 0300
clock, and I found myself with 889 Q's in the log, an array of half-filled
coffee mugs and water glasses around my operating position, and a BIC that was
very happy to about to be a BIB.
CU in two weeks and we can do it all over again!
73,
Rowland K4XD
QSO/Sec by hour and band
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 Total Cumm OffTime
D1-2100Z - - - 46/24 - 46/24 46/24
D1-2200Z - - 1/1 50/14 - 51/15 97/39
D1-2300Z - 7/2 23/9 4/0 - 34/11 131/50
D2-0000Z --+-- 36/9 --+-- --+-- --+-- 36/9 167/59
D2-0100Z - 43/3 - - - 43/3 210/62
D2-0200Z - 59/2 - - - 59/2 269/64
D2-0300Z - 51/3 - - - 51/3 320/67
D2-0400Z - 48/2 - - - 48/2 368/69
D2-0500Z - 4/0 32/3 - - 36/3 404/72
D2-0600Z 1/1 35/1 - - - 36/2 440/74
D2-0700Z - 17/0 24/1 - - 41/1 481/75
D2-0800Z --+-- 2/0 --+-- --+-- --+-- 2/0 483/75 55
D2-0900Z - - - - - 0/0 483/75 60
D2-1000Z - - - - - 0/0 483/75 60
D2-1100Z - 10/0 - - - 10/0 493/75 49
D2-1200Z - 15/0 18/1 - - 33/1 526/76
D2-1300Z - - 30/0 - - 30/0 556/76 13
D2-1400Z - - - - - 0/0 556/76 60
D2-1500Z - - - - - 0/0 556/76 60
D2-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 9/4 --+-- 9/4 565/80 30
D2-1700Z - - - 25/0 23/0 48/0 613/80
D2-1800Z - - - 22/0 15/0 37/0 650/80
D2-1900Z - - - 25/0 - 25/0 675/80
D2-2000Z - - 5/0 19/0 - 24/0 699/80 47
D2-2100Z - - 39/0 - - 39/0 738/80
D2-2200Z - - 40/0 - - 40/0 778/80
D2-2300Z - 18/0 7/0 7/0 - 32/0 810/80
D3-0000Z --+-- 28/0 3/0 --+-- --+-- 31/0 841/80
D3-0100Z - - 16/0 - - 16/0 857/80
D3-0200Z - 26/0 5/0 - - 31/0 888/80
D3-0300Z - 1/0 - - - 1/0 889/80
Total: 1/1 400/22 243/15 207/42 38/0
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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