[3830] ARRL 10 NK7U M/S HP

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                    ARRL 10-Meter Contest

Call: NK7U
Operator(s): NK7U, K7ZO
Station: NK7U

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Oregon
Operating Time (hrs): 23

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  740   123
  SSB: 1463   141
-------------------
Total: 2203   264  Total Score = 1,553,904

Club: Willamette Valley DX Club

Comments:

Well that was a lot of fun! Joe/NK7U and I took turns. Joe on CW and I on SSB.
Our goal was to keep our QSO points about equal between the two modes and it
worked out well. I had the last 10 rate meter hit 400 at one point. I have
never seen that before! Also had my best hour ever with a 235 hour on SSB
Saturday afternoon. Joe said his CW pileups were as deep as anything he has
ever experienced. It was just a bottomless pit. It was great working all those
new hams with the KI, KJ, and KK calls -- we had 53 of them in the log just
from the 4th call area. XEs were out in force again with 31 QSOs and 25 mults. 
Even as the contest came to an end the bandmap was full of stations we had not
worked. Somehow we managed to miss RI, WY, ND, and SD on CW and NM on SSB. VEs
were well represented with an amazing 61 VE3s and 3 NWTs. We did miss LAB and
NUN on both modes and MB, BC, and YT on SSB.  We thought our score was pretty
good though we only got to about 75% of the Oregon record M/S score. That AI7B
effort in 1989 must have been amazing, 3,454 QSOs! 

However we also have to agree with K7SS, K7RL, N7ZG and the other Pacific NW
stations that the Europe opening was disappointing. After a wonderful October
and November of 10 Meter propagation we have not seen in a decade the shorter
days of December finally caught up with us. Saturday our opening was from
16:15-17:15 UTC and we worked just the very western part of Europe -- EA, CT,
F, EI, and the G's. Sunday things started off great with a DL, I, 9A, and OE
quickly in the log around 16:00. Then we got a run going with loud EA, CT, and
G's calling in but after 10 minutes someone shut the door and that was it. The
band had a 5 minute bounce back about 20 minutes later and then it was gone for
good. Turned out worse than Saturday. Interesting though TM6M spotted us at
19:10 Sunday. No idea if they heard us or heard someone work us. 

Friday night was great fun for those who hung around. The band had its usual
close to Asia and points west a little more than an hour into the contest. It
was a pretty good start with VR, HS, NH2, 9V, 9M2, T8, 9M6 and other usual
suspects in the log. We went in for dinner and came back out and started
calling CQ. We had a great spotlight opening into NE, KS, MO, and IA -- fairly
short skip but signals were strong. We had no idea there were than many
stations in NE. We worked 9 of them. The band was not in as good a shape
Saturday night but we did have a pipeline into MN with 11 straight MN qsos over
a period of about 30 minutes. Lesson to everyone out there. The band is often
open at night if you hang around.

It was a fun and relaxing weekend. Thank everyone for the QSOs. 

We did notice several folks who had their logging software set to spot
everything they worked. It they were running this just succeeded in filling up
everyone's bandmaps with useless information. I did come across one Ham walking
another through how to turn it off. Sounded like the one guy didn't know he was
doing it and appreciated being notified. Let's all do this when we can. 

Scott/K7ZO


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