[3830] CQWW CW WC1M SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 43.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   66    13       53
   80:  526    21       77
   40: 1453    29      102
   20:  812    31       98
   15:  730    26       88
   10:   29    16       28
------------------------------
Total: 3616   136      446  Total Score = 6,113,328

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:

Congrats to K1DG for an outstanding performance, just shy of the all-time
record!

Though I'm far behind Doug, this is a personal best for score and Qs in CQ WW
CW, and my second best mults ever. My previous bests were set in 2000 and 2002,
way back when there were lots of sunspots and 10 was wide open. Amazing to do
better when the solar flux is a mere 77! The low bands certainly helped, with
much better conditions than we had for SSB. It was a real pleasure scooping up
mults on 160 and 80 the first night.

There were several highlights, like 3W1M calling in on 15 Saturday morning (was
that for real?), finally working BY3CQ on 20 when the pileups subsided, working
ZL8X on Kermadec on 80m (only!), VK6HG calling in on 40 for zone 29, and
finding JT5DX on 40 (can't recall ever working zone 23 on 40 from home.)

Although a score in the low 6 million range may not be good enough to hang on
to the top ten this year, I'm pleased with how I did, especially on mults. I
expected a lower score, given the nasty technical problems that plagued me
through most of the contest, plus a case of nearly terminal fatigue on Sunday
morning.

I'm pretty sure most of the technical problems were related to an intermittent
glitch in the USB support on my computer, which has been causing very strange
symptoms for several weeks, like devices not being recognized, devices being
mistaken for other devices, garbage characters being sent to and from devices,
etc. I believe this problem affected the USB SO2R switch box, causing it to do
some very strange and disruptive things during the contest, like screwing up
the "send call on second radio" sequence, messing up type-ahead in a very bad
way, and frequently refusing to send CW from the computer or paddle for 10-20
seconds. I also experienced random loss of COM ports (all of which are USB),
shutdown of an amp that uses a COM port, and the K3 receiving on a frequency
that was different from the transmit frequency (leading to a couple of very
weird frequency fights.) Switching versions of the logger helped with some of
the problems, but caused other problems to arise. All in all, I lost a lot of
time struggling to complete QSOs, changing USB port or hub connections, cycling
power on the K3 and SO2R box, loading different logger versions, rebooting the
computer, etc. I know someone is going to tell me my station is too
complicated, but all this stuff has been working fine for quite a while. Just
need to track down the USB problem.

The fatigue problem was even worse. Uncharacteristically, I felt very good on
the first day, though with the usual first-night adjustment to the task of
sitting in the chair for many hours without a break. I decided not to sleep on
the first night, though I lost about a half-hour due to the technical problems
described above. I did reasonably well during the morning runs and into the
afternoon, so I decided to keep going and not sleep the second night. The short
1.5-3 hour naps I usually take make me feel really awful when I wake up, and I
wanted to try skipping them altogether. I did take several breaks to eat,
shower and just get away from the radio, but that was it. Unfortunately, late
on the second night the lack of sleep caught up with me. I started feeling
really bad, drifting off in the middle of QSOs, losing track of what I was
doing, etc. I figured this would make the Sunday morning runs almost
impossible, so I took a 20 minute nap and had a couple of cups of coffee before
sitting down to run on 20. That went fairly well, as did the jump to 15. But
when I returned to 20 at about 1600z, I hit the wall. I felt absolutely awful.
I started hallucinating about the meaning of what was happening (some sort of
strange theory about what all the stations on the other end were trying to do,
what the exchange meant, etc.), losing awareness for several seconds, and
falling asleep in the middle of QSOs with my eyes open. Oddly, this didn't
affect the rate all that much. I think the incidents were very short, though
they seemed much longer. I finally concluded that I had to stop and get some
sleep before I passed out, and I took the 1700z hour off. Not a great time to
do that, and I lost a lot of Qs on 20 as a result.

This is one reason my Qs on 20 are low. Another reason is that I got on 20
maybe a half-hour late on Saturday morning, then jumped to 15 at 1230z. That
might have been a bit too early. Though the rate on 15 was good, it would have
been substantially higher on 20. I probably should have stayed on 20 until
1300z. Between that and the hour-long break at 1700z on Sunday, plus the
technical problems, plus 20 unexpectedly closing early to EU in the afternoon,
I probably left 200-250 20m Qs on the table. I tried to make it up on 40, which
is one reason that number is so high -- the most Qs I've ever done on 40 in any
contest, and 50% higher than my previous best on 40 in CQ WW CW. And that's
with not being able to run 40 for the first few hours of the contest. Anyway, I
guess I need to rediscover how to hop from band to band now that the sunspots
are back. During the last few years it really didn't matter -- 10 and 15 never
opened enough to run, and I could stay on 20 all day and 40 all night.

Speaking of rate, when it was there it was outstanding. If the rate was good
enough to get over 100/hr, it almost always got up to 150-200/hr. Some of the
pileups were so large they reminded me of 10m at the peak of the cycle. I think
this is an indication of continued growth of contesting in Europe.

Despite the glitches and fatigue, I had a great time. No matter what the
conditions or how I perform, CQ WW CW is always the best.

73, Dick WC1M


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