[3830] ARRLDX CW N7WA M/S HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: N7WA
Operator(s): N7ZG, N7WA
Station: N7WA

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

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   16    12
   80:  115    32
   40:  365    65
   20:  661    81
   15:  421    71
   10:   30    12
-------------------
Total: 1608   273  Total Score = 1,313,676

Club: Western Washington DX Club

Comments:

The ARRL DX CW always falls on the weekend when the Mike & Key ARC has it's
big planning session prior to hosting the largest hamfest in the Sate of
Washington. Being a part of the organizing committee, I gotta be there. That
makes any serious Single-Op attempt at this test  a lost cause because the
meeting occurs during the important morning run into Europe (if there is one).

Fortunately, this is Guy/N7ZG's second favorite test (after CQWW) so he is
plenty willing to do a 2-man Multi-Single (especially since I have his two
K3's sitting in my shack). He handles Saturday morning when I'm gone and I
handle Sunday when he's committed to other activities. Last year, we used
his call, this year was my turn so I get stuck with the summary. :>)

For me, there was a lot of anticipation built into this one simply because
there had been sunspots showing all year except for two days. While I wasn't
really expecting much out of ten meters at this time, I did fully expect some 
good activity on 15m as well as extended activity on 20M.

Friday started out good with steady runs into JA and Asia on 20M. We regularly
worked JA's down into the 5W level. (Shout-out to my buddy Atsushi JR1NKN/W7KN
who I worked on three bands with 5 watts!) With a second antenna pointed SE,
it
was easy to catch the occasional South American or Caribbean as they popped
up.
After about 3 hours, it was clear that 40M was going to open into Europe. It
wasn't a huge opening but provided plenty of multipliers over the course of a
couple hours. After about 0600 UTC, things slowed down a lot and you get into
a
regular rhythm of going up and down the bands (40/80/160) picking off whatever
shows up. 20-30 Q's an hour is pretty good for us from about local midnight
until just prior to daylight (about 6AM) when the JA's started showing in
sufficient numbers on 80 and 40.

I had to leave at 7:30AM local Saturday. At that time Guy was running Asia on
40 but you could see packet spots for 20M popping up and, as I was leaving,
even some for 15. After setting up the club meeting site, I popped my laptop
on and brought up GetScores. (It was tough - it's still not working right.)
What little I could see between the server timeouts showed Guy was screaming
on 20M (which I verified when I got back). I even saw when he jumped to 15 
but according to Guy, he started way too late and should have hit 15 earlier.
Even then, he had added substantially to the totals in just a few hours. By
the
time I arrived back home, I knew this was going to be an excellent year.

I won't go through the whole 48 hours except to say Sunday morning was a
repeat
of Saturday except I was in the chair and headed to 15M as soon as I could
hear
the stations being spotted. It started out S&Ping only the Kw stations but when
I heard the 100watters, I knew I could start start running myself. In fact, I
think 15M was better Sunday then Saturday as I was hopping between 15 and 20
all
day long with the occasion foray to 10m. It's been a long lean solar minimum
and it was fun remember just exactly why I contest. (I tried to share that
excitement with the Club by using GetScores but the server problems really put
a damper on that.)

When it was all done we has 1.3M points in the bag which is a "best " for this
station as well as the 1600 Q's. My pride was deflated (deservingly so) when I
saw the score of W7VJ just a few miles away in Gig Harbor. He had bested us
running as a single op for only 30 hours (versus our 48) with almost 1.4M
points. Good job Andy!  Still waiting to see how Mitch K7RL did - rumor has it
he was doing well.

Many thanks to my buddy Guy for coming over to play - it was fun. Looking 
forward to a continuing rise in solar activity.

cheers dink, n7wa


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