[3830] WPX CW YU1WC SOSB40 QRP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: YU1WC
Operator(s): YU1WC
Station: YU1WC

Class: SOSB40 QRP
QTH: Belgrade
Operating Time (hrs): 35,5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:     
   40:     
   20:     
   15:     
   10:     
------------
Total:  653  Prefixes = 461  Total Score = 772,636

Club: 

Comments:

For WPX CW 2011 I built a new antenna, a vertical with 2 elevated radials on the
rooftop of my building (35 meters above ground). I tested it only 2 weeks before
in CQ-M contest, and it worked great, much better than my 2x21m sloping doublet.
So my expectations for WPX were big - I was hoping for to improve my last year
score and reach 500 contacts.

The QRP contesting books say one should better skip the first hours of the
contest, when everyone is running as fast as possible, like someone will later
cut off the propagation. Luckily, I did not follow this rule and kept
accumulating qsos as much as I could. At the end, it turned out that most of my
USA and Caribbean contacts was done in those first contest hours. On Saturday
morning break time I felt confident with 260 qsos in the log, but the weather
forecast was bad. On Saturday afternoon, stormy clouds arrived, and I had to
have another break and disconnect the antenna. After the rain the storm moved
on, but it turned out that the new and untested antenna got wet and detuned,
with SWR above 3. The antenna tuner helped a bit, but the static crashes and
bad propagation took its toll. Early in the evening I was happy to work VK4CT,
9V1YC, couple of JA stations, but getting into the States was almost impossible
later during the night. It was very difficult to work midst static crashes, but
anyway in the morning hours I reached the goal of 500 qsos. After that it was
all just pure fun - I had plenty of time to enjoy watching the score-meter roll
with each new qso and prefix. During the day, I repaired the antenna by draining
the water from the contacts, and after some time it dried completely  and the
SWR descended back to 1:1. 600 qso mark was reached with 4 more hours to go,
but it was very difficult to find new stations to work. Going up and down the
band my bandmap was full of stations already worked. USA stations popped up,
but most of them could not hear me or were big guns worked already during the
first night. Anyway, in the last hour I worked some more 6 pointers and closed
the log with C6ABR, 5 minutes before the contest ended.

It was great fun, far above my expectations. The fun was even greater knowing
that I made it with a little homebrew rig. Thanks to all who had patience with
my qrp signal!

Rig: Genesis G40, SDR QRP monobander
Antenna: Vertical w 2 elevated radials @ 35 m rooftop (& 2x21m doublet for
backup)
Software: GSDR & N1MM

73 de Fric YU1WC


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