[3830] RAC Winter VE6RAC(@VE6JY) M/M HP

[webform at b41h.net]

                    RAC Winter Contest

Call: VE6RAC
Operator(s): VA6MA, VE6OH, VE6TR, VE6TCK, VE6WQ, VE6BF, VA6DX (+SONS DAVYN AND BRYSEN), TI2WGO, VE6JY
Station: VE6JY

Class: M/M HP
QTH: Lamont, Ab
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  CW Mults  Ph Mults
----------------------------------------
  160:   166     40      9         7
   80:   267    293     10        12
   40:   476    516     11        13
   20:   656    850     11        12
   15:   372    656     11        12
   10:   371    822     11        11
    6:            1                1
    2:     1      6      1         1
----------------------------------------
Total:  2309   3184     64        69  Total Score = 3,314,094

Club: 

Comments:

Band  Mode  QSOs    Pts  Sec
   1.8  CW     166     672    9
   1.8  LSB     40     272    7
   3.5  CW     267    1304   10
   3.5  LSB    293    2348   12
     7  CW     476    1984   11
     7  LSB    516    2518   13
    14  CW     656    2320   11
    14  USB    850    4234   12
    21  CW     372    1550   11
    21  USB    656    3060   12
    28  CW     371    1550   11
    28  USB    823    3026   11
    50  USB      1      10    1
   144  CW       1      10    1
   144  FM       6      60    1
 Total  Both  5494   24918  133
Score: 3,314,094

Still a few edits to change and to add a few missed QSO's that got paper logged
in the heat of battle! 

Biggest change from last year was a 3rd CW op (Tnx Will TI2WGO) so we added a
3rd full time CW station.  Obviously 10m was expected to be a factor this year
and it sure was - opened well before daybreak and was a bottomless source of
callers most of the day.  

Did not have enough ops to man all the stations all the time so instead of
having SSB and CW stations operating simultaneously on all the open bands we
had to flip the main station for that band back and forth, so we may have
missed a few because of that.  Spent virtually no time on 6 or 2 either, either
than a short time when Barry VA6DX got his young boys (8 and 10 yrs old I think)
to send out some CQ's on 2m FM. They were keen on doing this and they got a few
answers and hopefully they can be back next year to expand on that.  

Murphy stayed away but still had several problems (all self inflicted by me)
that caused lots of issues with N1MM and the network. The error windows had to
be cleared before one could log or send CW so these were a MAJOR pain and we
had to solve the issue that was causing this. It turned out that one of the 10
computers in the network had a much older N1MM version on it which caused the
errors - wasn't looking for that as I made SURE that I had put the latest (and,
most importantly the same version) on every computer or so I thought I had 
until I was checking the basics at about 3 am! Of course that was the busy 40m
ssb station so couldn't do any checking until they ran out of signals for a
bit.  Also one UPS was overloaded and crashed several hours into the contest
and that took down the network and several computers and added to our already
problematic issues with N1MM.  No QSO's were lost but some certainly weren't
made as we were short handed so I couldn't operate and network troubleshoot at
the same time.

Fortunately the RF hardware behaved fine, all ICOM flavoured radios and a
variety of amplifiers - well throttled back as I only have a 7.5 KVA electrical
service with which to run 8 HF stations on.  Propagation seemed very good on all
bands, no weather QRN here or QRM other what we created locally from having 8 HF
stations running at the same time.

I had predicted/expected/hoped for 5000 Q's before we started and somewhere
above 3 million points. The record from here of 4311 q's and ~2.7 meg was set
way back in '97 and we just haven't had the conditions to get close since until
yesterday, even with a LOT more antennas to choose from now.

Great to say to hi to all the familiar calls and to help wave the RAC flag for
a very enjoyable winter contesting event!

73 Don
VE6JY

with ops-   Mitch VE6OH   Rob VE6TR  Maurice VE6MAA/VA6MA
            Barry VA6DX and sons Davyn and Brysen
            Neil VE6TCK and bringer of the chili
            CW from Bill VE6BF Joel VE6WQ and Will TI2WGO


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