[3830] CQWW SSB NK7U M/2 HP

webform at b41h.net webform at b41h.net
Tue Oct 27 07:39:22 PDT 2009


                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: NK7U
Operator(s): NK7U, K7ZO, W7ZRC, W7CT, N7WR, KL2A
Station: NK7U

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: Oregon
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   31     9       10
   80:  200    19       41
   40:  419    31       89
   20: 1074    37      134
   15:  582    34       92
   10:   53     8       12
------------------------------
Total: 2359   137      378  Total Score = 2,752,675

Club: Willamette Valley DX Club

Comments:

Well that was more fun than we thought going into the weekend. Though our score
was slightly less than 2008, about 4% less, it just seemed more fun. It might
be that our expectations have been so lowered by the endless bottom to the
solar cycle that the small propagation presents we had last weekend took us
back to our childhood days of opening gifts during the holidays. This is the
fourth year with flux levels well under 80 for CQWW. For NK7U the little
packages we opened were:

1. Greatly improved 10M conditions than in 2008. We crushed our 2008 total of 9
qso’s with a whopping 53 this year. Who would have thought you could get
excited over 50 qso’s. But it just seemed fun. We even managed to have
QSO’s on all 6 bands with PJ2T and HC8A, after a total shutout of 6 banders
in 2008.

2. Also greatly improved conditions on 15M into both Europe and Japan. Last
year we had 25 QSO’s with Europe, this year we exploded with 65 including a
short run on Saturday morning. JA was similar with an increase from 101 to 111
QSO’s.

3. Much better performance on 40M to JA. Last year we had a disaster with only
21 40M Japan QSO’s. After the contest I traded messages with several other
west coast stations in an attempt to understand what happened since that was
our first contest at the new NK7U QTH. Was it this station, was it the local
geography, or was it propagation? The general consensus was that our path was
essentially closed for most of the contest. So, this year with a rebound to a
more respectable 123 we are feeling better. (More comments later on 40M in
general relative to simplex, band edges, etc.)

On the downside, as also mentioned by several stations here in the Northwest US
(K7ZSD, W7RN, K7RL, KL7RA) were the deteriorated low band conditions.

1. In general noise levels seemed much higher than last year.

2. The small flares on Saturday night effectively shut down 40M to Europe
during our prime time as well as all but closed down 80M. For a couple hour
period we could not even hear the east coast on 80M -- even with Joe’s
4-square and a high dipole. There was a 60 minute period during the 0500Z hour
on Sunday where we did not make a single QSO on any band.

3. Our record 160M performance in 2008 will remain the record for now. We
dropped from 107 QSO’s to 31 and from 43 Zone+Country mults to 19. 

4. On 80M our QSO total dropped modestly from 240 to 200, but what really hurt
was the loss in Zone+Country Multipliers. In 2008 we had a total of 86 and this
year just 60 a 30% drop.

More on the band stories in a bit. 

Joe has continued building his station out since last year. His current setup
is:

10M -- 7/7 both rotating as well as a 3 stack of C31’s fixed on Japan
15M -- 5/5/5 top fixed on EU, bottom two rotating as well as a 3 stack of
C31’s fixed on Japan.
20M -- 5/5 both rotating, 5/5 fixed on Europe, as well as 3 stack of C31’s
fixed on Japan.
40M -- 4 element beam rotating and a 3 element beam fixed on Japan
80M -- 4 square which has been totally rebuilt since last year and now uses
converted HiTowers as each element instead of irrigation pipe, also a rotating
dipole.
160M -- a 4 square array of 1/2 wave sloping dipole.

As seems to be the usual case some of this came together in the 24 hours before
the contest. In particular the 5/5 on 20M fixed on Europe and the 3 element 40M
beam fixed on Japan all were on the ground 30 hours before the contest started.
The last one was mounted on the tower and the hardline connected into the
switching matrix with about 90 minutes to spare. Not bad for us!

Also as Joe is building out multiple antenna selections on each band he has
implemented a new selection system that lets us feed any combination to a
radio. So, for instance on 20M we could aim the rotating 5/5 at Europe and
drive that stack along with the fixed 5/5 stack. Or on 15M to Japan we could
aim the rotating 5/5 there and pair them up with the 3 stack of C31’s. We
have no idea what our transmitting pattern is as a result of doing this but it
sure made us feel loud. And, having the extra aluminum drawing in RF as well as
the diversity aspects of the antennas being on two towers did seem to help on
receive.

With this background NK7U, K7ZO, W7ZRC, W7CT, KL2A, and N7WR assembled for a
Multi-Two entry in the 2009 edition of CQ WW SSB.

This year we didn’t get around to writing down any goals like we did last
year. By default this means our goals are, as they usually are: to beat K7ZSD
for top Oregon multi-op honors, to see if we can win our entry category “West
of the Mississippi, not including Texas”, and to achieve that magical goal of
being within 50% of the score from the top US entry in our category. 

As we tracked our score during the weekend we were pretty much on pace with
2008. A few QSO’s here a few mults there, but it was total score wise a rerun
of 2008. A few highlights by band follow:

10M: For the second year in a row we missed Zones 4 & 5 on 10M. How silly is
that? But, we just never heard one. At one point on Sunday afternoon during our
best opening, if you want to call it that, we moved a Run station to 10M and
even started calling “CQ looking for anyone anywhere, including Zones 4 & 5
in the US.” However conditions were certainly better than last year and we
managed to work two stations on 6 bands -- PJ2T and HC8A. Not sure what the
propagation was to HC8A but he jumped up out of the noise for about 30 seconds
and was well over S9, we were lucky enough to be listening when it happened,
worked him, got a comment from him to effect “Geez where have you guys been,
I thought I would have worked you by now”, and then he disappeared into the
white noise… 

15M: Not really much to add here from what was said earlier. It was better than
last year for sure notably into Europe. Our QSO’s outside the US increased by
10% and our Mults increased by a whopping 32% -- driven by better openings to
Europe, mostly on Saturday. On Saturday we even managed a couple small 5-7 QSO
runs. To the east coast US stations this probably seems not worth mentioning,
but out here on the west coast at this part of a solar cycle it’s a big
deal!.

20M: Was about what it always is until much higher in the solar cycle when
operators are spread out across more bands. This year we had a much harder time
establishing runs into Europe and our QSO total fell 23% as a result. The best
we did was holding 14.333 for about 40 minutes Sunday and making 60 or so
QSO’s. Even when we did manage to squeeze into the bedlam, and asked for a
true signal report, it was never above S9. Last year we usually received 59+
reports so propagation was not quite there to give us the signal levels needed
to establish and hold a run frequency. On the positive side participation from
BY continues to be strong with 30 in the log as well as 22 deserving KL7’s.

40M: This was interesting to be sure on several fronts. On the positive side
improved propagation to Japan as well as being able to operate simplex with
them raised our QSO count from 21 last year to 123 this year. This still is
below the 200 +/- we were used to 5 years ago but it is a step in the right
direction. Our best Asia/Japan opening came after dawn on Sunday and lasted
well after one hour past our sunrise. It was interesting when calling some
stations to lose out in the pileups to Europeans. We don’t remember that
happening very often in the past. On the negative side was our continuing
observation of stateside stations operating out of band at the lower end. Even
with the realignment, 40M is still very different around the world and even our
neighbors to the north in VE-land have a very different bandplan than we do.
There is a small group of operators we noticed trying to work stations well
below 7125 and even below 7100. In the past this was often the Wrong VFO
problem and most of us have --Been there done that--. But there is very little
split operation going on any more so this is not it. Anyone in the US operating
below 7125 is just not paying attention. The other group can’t quite seem to
figure out where the lower band edge is and there was a lively debate on this
topic raging on the cluster during the contest. I will not get into it here -
but it would help for the radio magazines to publish a short, one page, article
“Are you Out of Band”. Finally, on the somewhat humorous side were the bogus
spots someone was placing on the cluster Sunday morning allegedly from some of
the top contest stations. Within the period of a few minutes on 7160 were:
BS7H, P5RS7, and JD1BMM among others.

80M: Was really a disappointment for us this year as mentioned earlier and part
of the overall depressed low band conditions. Our QSO total dropped 17% and
mults dropped 30%. QSO’s with Japan dropped from 65 to 49 and to Europe from
12 to 4. Our only opening to Europe was at their dawn on Saturday and we worked
a G, a GI, a CT and a CU. The best QSO’s of the weekend were probably with
ZS9X and a very very weak J68JA giving them their first Zone 3 well into
Saturday night.

160M: After our amazing year last year our expectations were high. Joe’s
array of 4 sloping dipoles really get out and hear well as well. Band openings
in the week leading up to the contest were great and we hoped to put Europe in
the log again as we did last year for the first time ever in a CQWW contest.
But, this as well was not to be. High noise levels and poor propagation
conspired for a below average year. We even missed a good portion of the
Caribbean operations which are usually a given for us. Hope things get better
for the 160M contests this winter.

A few final tidbits
===================
Besides the 6 banders PJ2T and HC8A we would like to thank the following 5
banders for the QSO’s: FY5KE, KH7XS, KL7RA, V26B, VE5PV, and VE7SZ. It was
kind of a short list this year because of the low band conditions.

For us west coasters we pay particular attention to our JA QSO counts and in
recent years they seem to be dropping. Last year this was caused by a lack of
40M propagation which returned this year. It was nice this year to see the
upticks on 15-40. Let’s hope the trend continues.


           80     40     20     15    10     Total  Total Q's  % of total
2009       49    123    305    111     0     449    2359         19%

2008       65     21    241    101     0     428    2560         17%

2006      125    220    253     70     0     668    2733         24%

2005       77    191    266    220     0     754    3140         24%
  
2004       71    182     59    469   115     896    3505         25%

So, what about the goals for the contest? It is a little early to tell as there
are still scores to be posted from top stations. But it does look like we beat
K7ZSD’s M/M operation for top Oregon honors. We could lose out in log
checking, but we do have a 100,000+ point lead right now. We were crushed by
N5DX/K5GO in Arkansas in our goal to be “Top Score west of the Mississippi
not including Texas” So that goal is not to be. And right now we are at 47%
of the top US posted M/2 score. Last year we were 25% of WE3C’s great score.
If the 47% holds it will just about match our top M/2 finish but still fall
short of our 50% goal.

Scott/K7ZO

Our overall numbers follow:

          160M    80M    40M    20M    15M    10M   Total      %

    AS       0     50    135    419    118      0     722    30.6
    NA      25    124    161    256    259      3     828    35.1
    SA       2      9     21     38     96     49     215     9.1
    EU       0      4     51    311     65      0     431    18.3
    OC       4      8     39     33     16      1     101     4.3
    AF       0      5     12     17     26      0      60     2.5


QSO/ZN+DX by hour and band

 Hour     160M     80M     40M     20M     15M     10M    Total     Cumm   
OffTime

D1-0000Z  --+--   --+--   12/19  148/35   12/6    --+--  172/60    172/60  
D1-0100Z    -      8/10   13/13   67/11     -       -     88/34    260/94  
D1-0200Z   5/5     2/2    27/21   10/2      -       -     44/30    304/124 
D1-0300Z    -      6/8    26/10    7/2      -       -     39/20    343/144 
D1-0400Z    -      6/0    43/12    6/6      -       -     55/18    398/162 
D1-0500Z    -      8/4    16/7     9/2      -       -     33/13    431/175 
D1-0600Z  11/6     8/8     7/5      -       -       -     26/19    457/194 
D1-0700Z   5/3    13/8     7/2      -       -       -     25/13    482/207 
D1-0800Z  --+--    6/1    15/6    --+--   --+--   --+--   21/7     503/214 
D1-0900Z    -      6/0     6/2      -       -       -     12/2     515/216 
D1-1000Z   1/0     2/0     6/3      -       -       -      9/3     524/219 
D1-1100Z   1/0    15/3     2/0      -       -       -     18/3     542/222 
D1-1200Z    -      9/2     5/2      -       -       -     14/4     556/226 
D1-1300Z    -     14/3    14/3      -       -       -     28/6     584/232 
D1-1400Z    -      1/0     7/5    46/35     -       -     54/40    638/272 
D1-1500Z    -       -     22/2    36/15   10/15     -     68/32    706/304 
D1-1600Z  --+--   --+--    8/0    32/8    40/19   --+--   80/27    786/331 
D1-1700Z    -       -       -     44/2    65/16     -    109/18    895/349 
D1-1800Z    -       -       -     40/6    66/23     -    106/29   1001/378 
D1-1900Z    -       -       -     10/9    48/6      -     58/15   1059/393 
D1-2000Z    -       -      1/0    21/9      -       -     22/9    1081/402 
D1-2100Z    -       -       -     68/5    23/6     4/6    95/17   1176/419 
D1-2200Z    -       -       -     73/4    59/6     6/2   138/12   1314/431 
D1-2300Z    -       -      1/0    56/6    33/7      -     90/13   1404/444 
D2-0000Z  --+--   --+--   --+--   68/1    39/5    --+--  107/6    1511/450 
D2-0100Z    -      3/1    11/0    26/1      -       -     40/2    1551/452 
D2-0200Z   1/0    20/1     2/0    26/0      -       -     49/1    1600/453 
D2-0300Z    -      3/3     9/0      -       -       -     12/3    1612/456 
D2-0400Z   3/0     1/0     3/1     4/1      -       -     11/2    1623/458 
D2-0500Z   1/2      -       -       -       -       -      1/2    1624/460 
D2-0600Z   1/2     2/3    13/2     1/0      -       -     17/7    1641/467 
D2-0700Z   1/0     1/0      -       -       -       -      2/0    1643/467 
D2-0800Z  --+--   17/0     8/1    --+--   --+--   --+--   25/1    1668/468 
D2-0900Z   1/1    21/3     5/0      -       -       -     27/4    1695/472 
D2-1000Z    -     15/0    16/0      -       -       -     31/0    1726/472 
D2-1100Z    -      3/0    29/1      -       -       -     32/1    1758/473 
D2-1200Z    -      2/0     7/0      -       -       -      9/0    1767/473 
D2-1300Z    -      6/0     4/0      -       -       -     10/0    1777/473 
D2-1400Z    -      2/0    42/0    10/0      -       -     54/0    1831/473 
D2-1500Z    -       -     26/1    18/1    18/2      -     62/4    1893/477 
D2-1600Z  --+--   --+--   --+--   42/2    16/4     3/3    61/9    1954/486 
D2-1700Z    -       -       -     63/2    28/2     1/0    92/4    2046/490 
D2-1800Z    -       -       -     15/2    30/1      -     45/3    2091/493 
D2-1900Z    -       -       -      8/0    21/4     5/2    34/6    2125/499 
D2-2000Z    -       -       -     13/1    12/0    23/5    48/6    2173/505 
D2-2100Z    -       -       -     19/0    37/3     8/0    64/3    2237/508 
D2-2200Z    -       -       -     33/1    13/1     2/0    48/2    2285/510 
D2-2300Z    -       -      6/2    54/2    12/0     1/2    73/6    2358/516 
D3-0000Z  --+--   --+--   --+--    1/0    --+--   --+--    1/0    2359/516 

Total:    31/19  200/60  419/1201074/171 582/126  53/20  

          160M    80M    40M    20M    15M    10M   Total

   3B8                            1                     1
   3D2                     1      1                     2
   3DA                     1      1      1              3
    3V                            1      1              2
    4L                            3                     3
    4O                     1      1      1              3
  4U1I                            1                     1
  4U1U              1      1      1      1              4
    4X                            2                     2
    5B                     1      4                     5
    5H                                   1              1
    5R                            1                     1
    6W                     1      2      2              5
    6Y                                   1              1
    8P              1      1      1      1              4
    9A                     2      7                     9
    9K                            1                     1
   9M2                            1                     1
   9M6                     1      1      2              4
    9V                     1      1                     2
    9Y                            2                     2
    A3                            1                     1
    BV                     1      5                     6
    BY                     3     30      1             34
    CE                     2      3     10      5      20
    CM              2      1      1      2              6
    CN              1      2      2      2              7
    CT              1      1      3      7             12
   CT3              2      3      2      4             11
    CU              1      1      2      1              5
    CX                            1      5      1       7
    D4                            1                     1
    DL                     5     41      1             47
    DU                     3      4      1              8
  E5/s                                   1      1       2
    E7                     2      3      2              7
    EA                     2     19     26             47
   EA6                                   1              1
   EA8              1      1      2      4              8
   EA9                     1      2      1              4
    EI                     1      2                     3
    EK                            1                     1
    ER                     1      1                     2
    ES                            1                     1
    EU                            4                     4
     F                     2     11      7             20
    FM              2      1      1      2              6
    FO                                   1              1
    FS              1      1      1      1              4
    FY              1      1      1      1      1       5
     G              1             6                     7
    GD                            1                     1
    GI              1             3                     4
    GJ                     1      1                     2
    GM                     1      3                     4
    GW                     1      3                     4
    HA                     2      5      1              8
    HB                            1                     1
   HB0                            1                     1
    HC                            1      3              4
   HC8       1      1      1      1      1      1       6
    HI                            2      2              4
    HK              1      1             3              5
    HL                     3     12      2             17
    HP                     1             1              2
    HR                     1                            1
    HS                            6                     6
     I                     2     33      3             38
   IG9                                   1              1
    IS                                   1              1
   IT9                            3      2              5
    J3                                   1              1
    J6              1                    1              2
    JA             49    123    305    111            588
    JT                            1                     1
    JW                            1      1              2
     K      10     48     65    155    170      1     449
   KH0              2      2      3      1              8
   KH2              2      2      2      1              7
   KH6       4      4      8      9      5             30
    KL       1      4     10     22      2             39
   KP2       1      1      2      3      3             10
   KP4              2      3      4      7      1      17
    LA                            8                     8
    LU              1      2     12     26     11      52
    LX                            1                     1
    LY                     1      9                    10
    LZ                     1      3      1              5
    OA                     1      1      2              4
    OE                     1      6                     7
    OH                            9      4             13
   OH0                     1      2      1              4
    OK                     4     13      1             18
    OM                     1      2                     3
    ON                     2      7                     9
    OX                     1      1      1              3
    OY                            1                     1
    OZ                     1      6                     7
    P2                                   1              1
    P4              1      1      2      3              7
    PA                            6      1              7
   PJ2       1      2      2      2      2      1      10
   PJ7                     1      1      1              3
    PY              1      7      7     30     28      73
    PZ                     1      1      1              3
    S5                     4     13                    17
    SM                     1     12      1             14
    SP                     5     19                    24
    ST                                   1              1
    SV                            1                     1
   SV5                            1                     1
   SV9                            1                     1
    TA                            2                     2
   TA1                            1                     1
    TF                            1                     1
    TG                            1      1              2
    TI              1      1      2      3              7
    TK                     1      1      1              3
    TR                                   1              1
    UA                     2      9      1             12
   UA2                            1                     1
   UA9              1      2     35      3             41
    UK                            1                     1
    UN                            3                     3
    UR                            7                     7
    V2       1      1      1      1      1              5
    V3              1      1      1      1              4
    V4                     1      1      1              3
    VE      10     50     52     45     39            196
    VK                     6      2      1              9
  VP2M              1      1      1      1              4
  VP2V              1      1      1      1              4
   VP5       1      2      2      1      2              8
   VP9              1      3      1      1              6
    VR                     1      5      1              7
    VU                            1                     1
    XE       1      2      8      6      8             25
    YB                    11      6                    17
    YL                            1                     1
    YN              1      1      1      1              4
    YO                            4                     4
    YS                                   1              1
    YU                     1      8                     9
    YV              1      2      3      7             13
    Z3                            1                     1
    ZF                            1      1      1       3
   ZK2                     1      1                     2
    ZL                     4      3      2              9
    ZP                            1      2      1       4
    ZS              1      3      2      7             13


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