[3830] CQWW SSB K9YC SOAB(A) HP

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Mon Nov 1 14:09:22 PDT 2010


                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: K9YC
Operator(s): K9YC
Station: K9YC

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 28

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    7     4        3
   80:   68    17       26
   40:  132    26       52
   20:  345    31       87
   15:  344    30       80
   10:   28     7        9
------------------------------
Total:  924   115      257  Total Score = 926,280

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

I don't like SSB nearly as much as CW, and my station doesn't play as 
well on SSB as on CW, so I wasn't planning to take this weekend 
seriously. I didn't run SO2R, I didn't worry about a strong start, took 
some time off to watch a movie with the XYL Friday night, and went to be 
early, so no JA runs.

But, as I so often do, I got sort of fired up as things were going 
fairly well, I did get up to work EU Saturday morning, and by Saturday 
afternoon, had decided to take a nap before midnight and return to run 
JAs on 40 and 80.  That sort of backfired through -- by the time I was 
back up at 3am the skip was long and they were working the east coast 
and not hearing me very well.  Back to a nap at 5 am, then up at 8:30 am 
to hit the EU openings on 20 and 15.

Neither 15M or 20M were as good to EU as I've heard them (for example, 
ARRL CW this spring), but I still had fun.  The new 40M wire Yagi I put 
up for SS doesn't do much for EU or SA, but it sure does help in Africa.

One of the biggest negatives about SSB contests is the really awful audio
coming out of so many stations. These guys seem to think that if they drive the
rig harder, it will be louder. Instead, it drives the audio stages into
distortion, makes the audio muddy and hard to understand, and splatters like
crazy. The excessive mic gain also brings up the background noise, which also
increases the splatter. On at least a twenty signals, I either could not copy
their call, or had to listen so many times to get it that I simply gave up on
them.    

That's in addition to all the phase noise from old and/or cheap radios, and the
amps that depend on ALC to set power, creating more splatter.  I had a guy like
that about 1.5 miles from me who wiped out half of 20M when he transmitted. And
he called CQ non-stop. Compare that with K6XX, who's only 3.5 miles from me --
with our K3s, we can work a kHz apart on SSB and a few hundred Hz on CW without
bothering each other at all. 

Thanks for all the Qs. But PLEASE CLEAN UP YOUR RIGS! 73, Jim K9YC


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