[3830] CQWW CW N1SNB SOAB(A) LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: N1SNB
Operator(s): N1SNB
Station: N1SNB

Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: Massachusetts
Operating Time (hrs): 25

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    6     2        3
   80:  115    11       42
   40:  187    20       74
   20:  202    20       71
   15:  219    15       77
   10:   14     8       10
------------------------------
Total:  743    76      277  Total Score = 748,007

Club: 

Comments:

I made a late decision to operate this contest semi-seriously.  I've only lived
in my current QTH for about a year and have done very little antenna work or
shack building.  Correspondingly, I decided to buy an all band vertical just
for this contest to compliment my inverted G5RV. I settled on the MFJ-2990 - a
43 foot beast.  The antenna arrived the Friday of the contest at noon time. 
It needed a concrete footing and took way longer than the 1 hour advertised to
get this antenna going.  Of course, when I was installing the footing it was
below freezing and icing. I also put down 1500 feet of ground radials with
hours to spare before the start. But, come 0000z I was ready to go.

The antenna, overall, was a strong performer on 80,40 & 20, and was a
non-existent peformer on 160, 15 and 10. Almost all my work was S & P. 

Equipment:

FT-857 - 100 w
Inverted G5RV on 15
MFJ-2990 43' ground mounted Vert on the rest of the bands

Some General Comments:

- Caribbean mults seemed harder than normal, pileups seemed deep on 20, 15 and
10.  No 6 banders here.  Only one 5 bander, P40L.
- Only one European and one African on 10 meters.
- The pileups for D4C, C5A, 9L5VT were all crazy - 9L5 seemed to always have
the most callers
- Semi-rare mults like 5B4,ZA, OH0, IH9 and others were more commonplace than
some basic mults like XE, 6Y, ZS, HP, V31 all come to mind
- 730 S & P QSOs and 13 CQs
- Missed a lot of easy zones - 7 comes to mind
- I did use packet - although it was quite useless.  Seemed like spot volume
seemed down?


Here is my band by band breakdown:

160 - My 43' vertical really sucked it on 160.  No DX except for VP9I.  Also
missed zones 3, 4 and 6....wow! At least, I could hear DX, they just couldn't
hear me. This is an improvement.

80 - I thought 80 was great on Friday night and was not nearly as hot on
Saturday. No really exciting contacts.  I've been doing low power contesting
with bad antennas and 100 QSOs is a personal best on 80m.

40 - The new vertical worked well here.  I was really happy to snag ZL8, VK4,
A73 - all great 100w contacts in my book. A73A was memorable as he was being
called by wall to wall EU.

20 - Signals were strong in all directions.  Found a lonely 7Z1SJ CQing - also
was happy to work JA, VK, ZD8, 9L5, 4Z4 with low power.

15 - Found 9H3, 5H3 without pile-ups which was nice.  Signals seemed stronger
on Sunday.

10 - So frustrating.  LU, CX, and some Carib couldn't hear me. Signals seemed
to be way up and down between S0-S9 in seconds.  Worked EA8, CR6 on Sunday

Thanks for all the contacts.
73
Jeff 
jbdemers at gmail.com


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