[3830] CQWW CW K5NA SOAB(A) HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: K5NA
Operator(s): K5NA
Station: K5NA

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: STX
Operating Time (hrs): 40
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   59    17       42
   80:  169    26      100
   40:  319    38      145
   20:  382    38      145
   15:  242    33      103
   10:   63    14       31
------------------------------
Total: 1234   166      566  Total Score = 2,492,460

Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club

Comments:

I really like the CQWW CW. I like the activity level and I like the fact that it
is mainly a callsign contest. If you get the other guy's callsign right, the
exchange is automatic. It makes for fast and fun operating.

I didn't want to do a serious effort this year because of other factors and I
decided to just have fun. That meant doing a single-op assisted and going for
the DX rather than going for a high score. I wanted to spend a weekend doing
nothing but fast and furious DXing. I have been a little under the weather
lately and I couldn't see putting in 46 to 48 hours of operating. So I slept
both nights and ended up with about 40 hours of sitting before the radio.

My goal was to work every multiplier spotted on packet. That was just a goal as
naturally I did miss a few. But I wanted to work a lot of different DX. My plan
was to chase multipliers first and then to work non-mults from packet spots
when things got slow for new multipliers.

I made a conscious decision early on not to call CQ and I managed to do a full
weekend of only search and pounce. Let me repeat, I NEVER called CQ the entire
weekend. A majority of the stations I worked, I called them in their pileup.
Yes, I did manage some QSOs with stations when I was the only station calling
them. 

I did a lot of transmit signal shifting plus or minus to get off the main
pileup clutter and it worked most of the time. Though I was running high power,
I tried to practice tricks that probably come naturally to good QRP and low
power operators. Several times over the weekend I had the 10 minute rate meter
over 100 QSOs per hour. It was great fun.

10 meters and 15 meters were very poor, among the all-time worst conditions
this year. This is compared to previous CQWW efforts. But 20 through 160 meters
were superb.

I was set up for SO2R but I basically did one radio. Since I wasn't CQing, I
never had occasion to tune the second radio during the CQs. The two radios were
on different bands simply for a fast QSY.

After the end of Saturday night, I had 98 countries on 80M. I had never made
100 countries on 80M in any contest before and I really wanted to make it this
time. So I sacrificed the high bands on Sunday night to work hard on 80M during
the short time we might have conditions before sunset. Our sunset here is about
30 minutes before the end of the contest.

At 2300Z Sunday evening, I was on 80M searching and things happened quickly. I
heard and worked GW4BLE at 2309Z and then worked IS0/K7QD at 2310Z for #100. I
thought that I had a good chance to get some insurance multipliers with 50
minutes remaining. But I couldn't work any of the other multipliers that I
heard on 80M after that.

About the time I was working the last two multipliers on 80M, Susan (K5DU) was
answering the door and letting in company. XE1KK, WM5R, and W5JEN stopped by to
look at the station. Their visit was timed so we could all go out to dinner
immediately after the contest.

Just after they walked through the door, I worked #100 on 80M; I raised my arms
in the air and cheered. I know the vistors must have imagined my doing that all
weekend every time I worked a new multiplier. I quickly explained about #100 on
80M and they understood. They then went to look at antennas while I finished the
contest.

Between doing the contest and having Sunday evening dinner with friends, it was
a totally great weekend.

See you next year.

73, Richard - K5NA


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