[3830] ARRLDX CW K8CN SOAB QRP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: K8CN
Operator(s): K8CN
Station: K8CN

Class: SOAB QRP
QTH: FN43md NH
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:           
   80:   13    11
   40:  173    50
   20:  283    60
   15:  125    52
   10:    7     5
-------------------
Total:  601   178  Total Score = 320,934

Club: 

Comments:

Rig: K2  Ant: Lazy H, cut for 20M, half-wave spacing between doublets, fed at
center of phasing line for multi-band operation.

Even with a delayed start on Saturday morning, I stumbled into a personal best
performance in my admittedly limited QRP contesting experience.  Any feeling of
smugness was rapidly erased when I realized, after reading other QRP ops'
postings, that the rising tide of good propagation conditions lifts **all**
boats, not just mine.  There's still plenty for me to learn!

Pleasant surprises: finding room to run on 20M on Sunday afternoon and actually
keeping up a decent rate in that mode; catching 5W7OU on 40M at Sunday morning
gray line and VK7GN later that afternoon on 20M at gray line - that magical
gray line is worth 10 dB of antenna gain in a pileup; working several EU
stations (e.g. F5MUX) who were loud here only to find that they too were QRP --
I hope I was that loud in EU!

Things for which I had wished during the contest: better filter skirts when
trying to discern the LP stations hidden among the tightly packed behemoths on
40M; even simple antennas oriented to JA (to take advantage of the 15M/20M
openings I heard) and SA (for the trans-equatorial propagation)that would have
added much needed mults -- the lazy H tried in vain, but being end-on to those
directions makes me QRPp instead of QRP+; a 40M antenna with decent F/B ratio
when working EU or AF -- my ears are still ringing from those big gun U.S.
signals!

Things I learned the hard way: Window line from the lazy H laying in snow slush
on my roof transforms any reasonable antenna impedance into something beyond the
capabilities of conventional matching units. 

A big thanks, as always, to those patient ops who spent precious time digging 
for repeats of my call and exchange until we got it right -- without your
persistence QRP contesting would be much less fun. 

73, Mike K8CN


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