[3830] CQ WW RTTY P49X(W0YK) SOAB HP
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webform at b41h.net
Mon Sep 27 10:40:17 PDT 2010
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: P49X
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: P40L/P49Y
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Aruba - FK52al
Operating Time (hrs): 44:11
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Pts State/Prov DX Zones
-------------------------------------------
80: 369 1098 49 52 19
40: 1217 3626 57 76 23
20: 1319 3941 57 73 27
15: 1712 5109 56 92 30
10: 407 119 48 44 21
-------------------------------------------
Total: 5024 14967 267 337 120 Total Score = 10,836,108
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
3830 Report
What a great season opener for the CQ World Wide DX Contest series! In Aruba,
the bands were wonderful this weekend. Of course, expectations are
significantly lower with the extended solar cycle low. This was the third
contest this year that pleasantly surprised me with contest results that are
clearly related to improving band conditions. The first was ARRL DX CW from
here in Aruba, when 160 through 10 provided exciting propagation. The second
surprise was the Russian World Wide DX RTTY Contest just a few weeks ago. For
the first time in several years we had prolonged great propagation from the NA
West Coast into Europe on 15 meters … enough to remind us of how things are
outside of a solar dip. Operating from near the equator is favorable even in a
solar low, but all the bands were relatively excellent here compared to recent
years at this QTH. Hopefully, we’re not far away from this North-South
high-band propagation expanding to some good East-West propagation.
80 through 15 were solid all weekend, open strongly at the expected local times
during the daily cycle. Ten was a bit like 6 meters with its fast QSB, yet
pretty stable On Friday through Sunday. Friday mid-day, we enjoyed a solid
10-meter opening into Europe for over three hours. It even felt eerie, being
so long since we’ve experienced it. Saturday and Sunday were not as good,
but still remarkable. I had a real taste of what I hope ten comes back to as
solar activity increases. My 10-meter results were definitely limited by lack
of activity. People must be so accustomed to it being dead that they don’t
try. There are two ways for a band to be “deadâ€: lack of propagation and
lack of operators!
The local weather helped a lot with a much higher than normal rainfall which
thoroughly eliminated any power-line noise. On the other hand, the downpours
were so huge that I worried about rain static on the antennas and flooding in
the house. Some schools and businesses closed this week when their buildings
flooded. Friday as I was running Europe on 10 and 15, there was hardest
rainfall I’ve ever experienced. So hard that even static couldn’t build up
on the antennas! I heard a loud crash from another part of the house, even
through the noise-cancelling headphones. Checking, I found the light fixture
had been jarred out of the kitchen ceiling from the pounding rain on the metal
roof.
This modest little station (three 50-70 foot towers on a city lot) performed
flawlessly. In fact, I can’t recall a contest where I had zero problems to
troubleshoot either outside or inside the shack. That’s the goal, of course,
but in this tropical environment it is a challenge to keep it all working well
as island visitors. My thanks again to John, W6LD/P40L, and Andy/AE6Y, AE6Y,
for their commitment to the station and including me in its use. I arrived 1-2
days later than normal, taking the risk that I wouldn’t have much station work
and hoping to focus on operating, exercising and sleeping well. As usual,
things turned out different. The rain and flooding prevented running for
exercise. The vacationers here a week of beach-duty were surely disappointed!
Then, I spent all my pre-contest time sorting out issues with my computers.
(How often do we read about that problem in this hobby?!) So, I did little
operating and also lost sleep instead of going into the weekend well-rested.
I never was successful getting two parallel MMTTY installations working
properly on each computer for supporting the two receivers in each radio. (My
plan was to tune for mults with the second receiver on the same band I was
running on--times two for SO2R. Or, is it SO4V? And, then what do you call it
when a third radio/computer is added to the mix? Wow, five audio streams into
two ears and 7-11 decoder windows to keep track of.) Anyway, somewhere in
Windows/soundcard drivers/MMTTY/etc. the right and left channels would randomly
move around. Even MMTTY standalone outside the logger wouldn’t behave. Since
there are usually two run bands 24 hours a day from here, it doesn’t pay to
give one up for searching. In fact with 10 open, there were three high-rate
day-time bands so now the juggling game (or SO3R!) begins. And at dusk I had
the choice of running on any two bands, 40-15 and still working stations on 80!
My 20 meter numbers suffered from all the time I spent on 10 and I have yet to
perfect SO3R for running ...there’s just too much dead-time on one or more
radios with three transmissions interleaved.
I networked in a third computer/radio for a SO3R configuration. The
simplifying factor was dedicating the third radio to ten meters. It was a Icom
756ProII with its bandscope to constantly monitor the band for activity. Audio
was mixed with the right run radio via a mixer/switch that allowed selection of
either or both radios. Mostly I streamed only the right run radio until I saw
activity on ten when I could mix in that audio for easier tuning to check out
the signals there. When HC8/K6AW was running on 10, I camped there and
WriteLog gave me an excellent picture of the rate and whether Steve was working
new mults and stations that weren't in my log. When I wanted to run on ten, I
moved one of the two main radios there, but for moving mults to ten, the
barefoot radio worked great.
My main concern for this contest was maximizing my alertness throughout the 48
hours. In 2008, I had troubling hallucination for the second half of the
contest. This summer I started aerobic exersising again in preparation for
these 49-hour contesting marathons and also researched sleep deprivation. I
made a big effort to self-monitor my mental acuity so I could take action
before it was too late. Saturday night I took a 25 minute break when 15/10
started shutting down and I was ready for 20/40. I cooked an egg omelet,
refreshed a bit and started up again as I was eating. A few hours later I
realized that I was forgetting why I was pushing the specific keys in the
specific order during the QSO phases. I knew the first signs of debilitating
sleep deprivation were setting in. I fought it and did mental exercises to
keep from sliding down the slope, but I knew that with 20 hours ahead of me I
needed a couple of REM cycles in bed so I would be at maximum effectiveness on
Sunday. So, I went to bed from 7-10 UTC, leaving maybe 100 Qs and a handful of
mults behind. My strategy was to shake the mental decline so I could deal with
the pileups and rate for the last 14 hours. In retrospect, that was a fine
decision.
Coming into the contest, I had modest expectations. In 2008 as SO HP from
here, I made 3400 Qs for 6M points. In 2009, EF8M moved the SO HP world record
from 7.4M to 8.9M, beating our M2 effort here in Aruba tha year by 400K. EF8M
was reported to be going back to defend and raise his record. So, I stuck to
my normal contest goal of maximizing the operating fun during the contest and
not concerning myself too much with winning or records. I was convinced that
this little station could not compete with a good op from a super station on
the canary islands. CQing for over a minute on 40 and 20 before my first QSO
cemented my resolve to just focus on having fun. Immediately, I had tremendous
pileups and it never let up until I left callers hanging at 00z on 27 September.
Conditions here in Aruba were much better than the last two years. My rate was
on a different upward slope compared to both prior operations. At 24 hours, I
was 600 Qs ahead of my 2008 SO HP effort and on track for maybe 4500 Qs and
close to 9M points, assuming the bands held up on Sunday. They held up! There
were many great moments and my favorites were when so many ops moved to other
bands for me. Of course, there were the classic "contest moments" where some
juicy double mult would call in on 15 and then quickly move to our
newly-revived 10-meter band and 20 for me. That more than made up for my
frustration at not feeling I could leave my run frequencies to chase many other
mults that I knew were active on the bands and never made it into my log. The
log statistics below this (long-winded) report tell the two-day adventure.
Thanks so much to the endless supply of RTTY operators who make this so much
fun. At times, my pileups were growing faster than I could work them down. I
know some people were annoyed and left. I'm sorry I missed so many, but I
guess this is a better problem than dead bands! I'm always striving to improve
my operating efficiency and there is plenty of headroom in that quest. Thanks
for your patience and support. Contesters are great!
Ed - P49X (W0YK)
80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
EU 102 470 385 997 66 2020 40.2
NA 252 660 872 580 300 2664 53.0
AS 0 49 36 87 1 173 3.4
SA 9 25 15 26 27 102 2.0
AF 2 1 5 11 11 30 0.6
OC 4 12 6 11 2 35 0.7
QSO/Zn+Dx+St by hour and band
Hour 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm OffTime
D1-0000Z --+-- 71/56 97/51 --+-- --+-- 168/107 168/107
D1-0100Z - 94/26 105/13 - - 199/39 367/146
D1-0200Z - 92/11 84/5 - - 176/16 543/162
D1-0300Z - 77/11 56/6 - - 133/17 676/179
D1-0400Z - 102/14 43/17 - - 145/31 821/210
D1-0500Z 46/38 76/6 15/3 - - 137/47 958/257
D1-0600Z 53/22 63/6 - - - 116/28 1074/285
D1-0700Z 20/7 47/4 - - - 67/11 1141/296
D1-0800Z 17/3 20/1 --+-- --+-- --+-- 37/4 1178/300
D1-0900Z 24/9 26/3 - - - 50/12 1228/312
D1-1000Z 28/7 35/2 - - - 63/9 1291/321
D1-1100Z - 31/2 29/9 39/27 - 99/38 1390/359
D1-1200Z - - 57/9 70/7 - 127/16 1517/375
D1-1300Z - - 63/2 79/15 - 142/17 1659/392
D1-1400Z - - 49/2 88/19 - 137/21 1796/413
D1-1500Z - - 41/4 91/13 - 132/17 1928/430
D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- 15/2 92/19 8/17 115/38 2043/468
D1-1700Z - - - 76/9 35/21 111/30 2154/498
D1-1800Z - - - 73/12 43/19 116/31 2270/529
D1-1900Z - - - 81/10 53/18 134/28 2404/557
D1-2000Z - - - 88/10 84/20 172/30 2576/587
D1-2100Z - - - 81/6 36/4 117/10 2693/597
D1-2200Z - - - 61/3 16/1 77/4 2770/601 16
D1-2300Z - 45/2 59/4 - - 104/6 2874/607 7
D2-0000Z --+-- 47/0 52/6 --+-- --+-- 99/6 2973/613
D2-0100Z - 66/4 40/1 - - 106/5 3079/618
D2-0200Z 25/9 52/1 10/0 - - 87/10 3166/628
D2-0300Z 46/13 53/1 - - - 99/14 3265/642
D2-0400Z 51/5 67/2 - - - 118/7 3383/649
D2-0500Z 28/6 54/2 - - - 82/8 3465/657
D2-0600Z 16/0 25/0 - - - 41/0 3506/657 17
D2-0700Z - - - - - 0/0 3506/657 60
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 3506/657 60
D2-0900Z - - - - - 0/0 3506/657 60
D2-1000Z 15/1 23/1 - - - 38/2 3544/659 8
D2-1100Z - 26/0 37/2 28/3 - 91/5 3635/664
D2-1200Z - - 49/3 80/2 - 129/5 3764/669
D2-1300Z - - 34/1 74/3 - 108/4 3872/673
D2-1400Z - - 53/1 91/4 - 144/5 4016/678
D2-1500Z - - 54/6 70/1 1/1 125/8 4141/686
D2-1600Z --+-- --+-- 69/4 78/0 --+-- 147/4 4288/690
D2-1700Z - - 10/0 61/1 14/3 85/4 4373/694
D2-1800Z - - 33/0 68/0 - 101/0 4474/694
D2-1900Z - - 69/2 48/4 - 117/6 4591/700
D2-2000Z - - 70/1 38/5 - 108/6 4699/706
D2-2100Z - - 6/0 55/1 57/6 118/7 4817/713
D2-2200Z - - - 74/2 55/3 129/5 4946/718
D2-2300Z - 25/1 20/3 28/2 5/0 78/6 5024/724
Total: 369/1201217/1561319/1571712/178 407/113
80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
3A 1 1
4X 1 3 4
5B 1 2 3
5N 1 1 2
9A 1 2 4 14 2 23
9M2 1 1 1 3
A6 1 1
CE 1 2 1 4
CM 1 10 5 4 2 22
CN 1 1
CT 2 4 5 2 13
CT3 2 1 2 3 1 9
CU 1 1
CX 1 1 2
DL 22 63 64 224 8 381
DU 1 1
E7 2 3 1 6
EA 3 17 10 42 12 84
EA8 2 4 6 12
EA9 1 1 2
EI 2 2
ER 3 1 4 8
ES 1 3 3 5 12
EU 1 5 5 5 16
EY 1 1 2
F 4 26 12 39 5 86
FG 1 2 2 1 6
FM 1 1 1 1 1 5
FO 1 1 1 3
FY 1 1
G 9 24 21 56 110
GD 1 1
GI 1 1 1 6 9
GM 1 5 2 10 18
GU 1 2 3
GW 1 3 1 2 7
HA 2 9 3 17 1 32
HB 2 4 2 15 23
HC 1 2 1 4
HC8 1 1 1 3
HI 1 3 1 1 6
HK 2 1 1 1 5
HL 1 1 2
HP 1 1 2
HS 1 1
HZ 2 1 3
I 6 44 34 141 16 241
IS 2 4 1 7
IT9 1 4 2 10 6 23
J3 1 1 1 3
J7 1 1 2
JA 33 8 66 107
K 217 574 780 507 263 2341
KH2 1 2 1 1 1 6
KH6 1 3 1 2 7
KL 1 5 3 9
KP2 2 2 1 1 1 7
KP4 1 4 1 6
LA 5 7 7 19
LU 2 8 8 11 13 42
LX 1 1 1 3 6
LY 2 3 5 6 16
LZ 1 3 1 5 10
OE 2 3 5 15 2 27
OH 2 10 12 15 39
OH0 1 1 2
OK 3 16 12 29 2 62
OM 10 5 8 23
ON 4 4 18 26
OZ 3 5 7 15
P4 1 1 1 3
PA 7 22 24 46 2 101
PJ2 1 1 1 1 4
PY 1 7 3 5 7 23
S5 3 10 9 16 2 40
SM 2 7 6 19 34
SP 5 27 29 52 113
ST 1 1 2
SV 8 4 10 2 24
SV5 1 1
SV9 1 4 5
T7 1 1 1 1 4
TA 1 1
TF 1 2 3
TK 1 1
TR 1 1 2
UA 7 47 37 48 1 140
UA9 10 22 3 35
UN 1 4 1 6
UR 4 45 32 43 124
VE 25 53 62 52 23 215
VK 1 4 1 6
VP8 1 1
VP9 1 1 1 1 4
VU 1 3 4
XE 2 9 11 7 7 36
YB 1 5 1 7
YL 3 5 6 8 22
YO 2 10 6 17 35
YU 1 7 1 8 17
YV 2 6 1 9
Z3 1 1 2 4
ZC4 1 1
ZL 2 3 5
ZP 1 1
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