[3830] CQWW CW K0DQ(@WW1WW) SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: K0DQ
Operator(s): K0DQ
Station: WW1WW

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 43.75
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   67    16       47
   80:  325    24       86
   40: 1903    29      102
   20:  672    33      101
   15:  851    32      113
   10: 1163    26       97
------------------------------
Total: 4981   160      546  Total Score = 10,304,070

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

What fun!  Incredible conditions!  Great competition!  Congrats to Doug, K1DG,
Randy, K5ZD, and whoever else comes out of the woodwork over 10 Million.

CQWW CW 2011 turned out to be the shakedown cruise for the newly commissioned
New England dreadnought â€" the emergent WW1WW contest superstation launched
and christened BATTLESHIP NEW HAMPSHIRE.  (I know.  That metaphor would make
KC1XX, W3LPL, K3LR, et al Aircraft Carriers.  I can live with that.)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:  The station performed extremely well . . . The operator not
quite so well, although an honorable effort.   Two personal goals were achieved
but much room for improvement remains.

BATTLESHIP NEW HAMPSHIRE â€" the station and the shipbuilder (WW1WW)

Those of you who stayed awake at the contest dinner in Dayton will recall KC1XX
had introduced me to Woody, WW1WW.  Woody was a seasoned DXer with a great DX
Station.  He’d never operated in a serious contest but was a superb engineer
(both electronic and mechanical) who welcomed the challenge of building a
standout contest station (while retaining superb DX capabilities â€" meaning,
inter alia, a dislike of fixed antennas!).  Woody is a driven perfectionist who
won’t settle for second best.  This was a marriage made in heaven!  

The first outing was last February in ARRL DX.  A good outcome (#1 US) ensued
but it also illuminated several shortfalls, which Woody set out to overcome in
the next eight months after the snow melted.

Working feverishly,  Woody cleared land, put up a third 200’ rotating tower,
designed his own version of wideband yagis (“diamond drive”) and proceeded
to build 13 â€" count ‘em 13 - rugged, long boom yagis totaling 74 full size
elements on four bands.  Additionally, he put up a second 120’ vertical for
phasing on 80 and 160.  Inside the shack, he built his own rugged phasing boxes
(think (Stackmatch)) which would likely survive inadvertent hot switching and
high-power bandpass filters.  The net result was the ability to shoot in
multiple directions with significant gain as well as operate SO2R on any two
bands with minimal interaction.

In the event, the hardware performed as advertised.  The only outside issue was
the failure of the commercial phasing box for the verticals on 80 & 160.  As a
result, we ended up with one vertical on each band with no gain on either 80 or
160.

The last hardware phase occurred in the days before contest inside the shack. 
That involved setting up the station and automation.  As is often the case,
getting the computer and all the radios and accessories to talk to each other
consumed about eight hours.  In the end, changing two numbers (hex address of
radio, antenna detail in bandswitching 8 Pak) brought everyone on to the same
page and made bandswitching a matter of entering the frequency and retuning the
manual finals (AL-1500s).  

The initial plan was to use two IC-7600’s so as to have similar radios in
each position.  When one of them suffered a fried output stage, Woody picked up
an IC-7700 on Friday and we ended up installing it, as well as an existing
IC-7800, a few hours before the contest began.  

The final setup included:

Tower 1- 200’ rotatable:  4 over 4 on 40 meters; six stack of 6 element yagis
on 10 meter â€" the true 16 inch guns.

Tower 2 â€" 200’ rotatable:  6 over 6 on 20; 6 over 6 over 6 on 15; 6 over 6
on 10.

Tower 3 â€" 200’ rotatable:  3 el 40 @ 187’; 6 over 6 on 20, 6 0ver 6 on 15
(ten to be added)

Tower 4 â€" 60’:  14-30 Mhz home brew Log Periodic (used as south antenna on
10).

Two verticals:  ½ wave on 80, ¼ wave on 160.  Lots of ground plane.

Inside the shack:

Radio 1:  IC-7800 x AL-1500
Radio 2:  IC-7700 x AL-1500

Win-Test 4.9.1 (with N6TV scripts for TRLog-like SO2R functionality)

DX Doubler; plus Array solutions 8 Pak for transmit antennas, 6 Pak for receive
antennas, Filter Max BPF & Bandmaster band decoders.

THE BATTLESHIP CREW â€" K0DQ

Mrs. Admiral gave me a ‘get out of jail free’ pass to miss Thanksgiving
with the family so I was cleared to operate the first CQ WW from stateside in
over 25 years.  

I set out with three objectives:  
1.	to break 5000 raw (physical) QSO’s (believed to be a first on CW from US)
2.	to break 10 million points
3.	to win


Objective 1:  5000 raw QSO’s - Achieved.  In 1973 as 6J9AA I had the first
ever 10K raw QSO contest as a single op.  Looking back at past results, it
appeared no one had made 5000 QSO’s in a CW contest from the US.  Thought it
would be nice to do that.  In the event, QSO #5000 turned over at 2141Z on
Sunday when OK1BLU called in.  Final raw was 5182 QSO’s.  I had a ton of
dupes on 40 Sunday afternoon.  I suspect I had been incorrectly spotted; either
on day 1 or 2 (won’t be surprised to find a K0DX spot).  After dupes I ended
up with 4981.  I’m still kicking myself for not hitting the numbers more in
last hour.

Objective 2:  10M points - Achieved, sort of.  The 10 million point claimed
score mark rolled over with 2 or three hours left in the contest.  Nice to see,
but that will obviously fall to the UBN slicers and dicers.

Objective 3:  Winning for US.  Although conceivable, that looks doubtful in the
extreme. Doug and Randy are past masters at this and I suspect their UBN reports
will be cleaner than mine.  In retrospect, that 4+ hours off for sleep looks
increasingly like a bad idea.  About 12 mults or 84 QSO’s would have put me
about even with Dougie at 10.5M (who took only 2 hours off) and half that would
have pulled me close to Randy at 10.4M (3 hours off).  Who knew?  Maybe
there’s an extra hour or so of operating in these old bones.  Then again, I
could have called out the SEALs for both of them.  

GENERAL COMMENTS:

Overall, I was pleased with the outcome.  There are a few more minor things to
be done with the station and Woody already has plans for those.  But most of
the possible improvement will come between my ears.  

Propagation:  

All propagation is local.  While I had done well from Woody’s and Jeff,
VY2ZM’s, in recent ARRL DX contests, this was a completely different contest
with high sunspots and 10 meters. Although I had done some research, I never
felt I was ahead of the curve in anticipating propagation.  

Man machine interface:  

This is only my third contest with ICOM radios and the first with an IC-7700. 
I’ve moved beyond the basics but still have a lot to learn.  Also, the new
complexity of the antenna matrix is bit challenging, but a nice to have
problem.  

Finally, I continue to learn about details of Win-Test and will make a few more
tweaks. That said, by the second day, I had the 2nd radio process working pretty
smoothly, even at rates above 150.  Need to match the strategy more closely with
that capability (e.g. probably spent too much time running on 10, resulting in
fewer 2nd radio mults there).  Also, I only remembered too late in contest to
check for the easy mults and ended up missing a few, like a G on 160 and
several of the easy DXpeditions.  

Strategy.  

I think I psyched myself out on 80 and 160.  I knew Doug had the salt water
advantage on 80 and 160 and  Randy had a 4 square on 80.  I tried to establish
runs both nights with minimal success on 80 and zero on 160 so, with no gain
antenna, I tended to avoid them in favor of the heavy artillery on 40 (2K+ raw
QSOs).  In the end, my mult total suffered on both the low bands, although I
did find I was able to break pile ups fairly easy the second night.

Rates.

Interestingly, although rates were steady, I didn’t have any really big
hours.  I had a 213 hour in ARRL DX and expected bigger numbers in CQ with its
shorter exchange, but the zero beat pileups slowed things down.

Social.

It was nice to see some old friends and meet some new ones.  Fred, KK1KW, and
his wonderful wife Mary included us in their Thanksgiving family dinner.  Great
food and fellowship and a pie table the likes of which you’ve rarely seen.

Matt, KC1XX, and his lovely bride Christine hosted a great brunch Monday after
the contest for some of his operators and Woody and me.  It was especially nice
to meet and finally talk with Bill, K1GQ.  Bill had been KH6RS in the early
1970’s when I was in Mexico and we competed head to head in many contests.   


SUMMARY.

It occurred to me late in the contest how blessed we are to have a hobby we can
enjoy into our later years.  Where else can you be approaching or past (N6TJ
wake up) your four score and ten and be competitive at the national and
international level.

Finally, and most importantly, Thanks to Woody Beckford, WW1WW, for the
privilege of being part of the BATTLESHIP: NEW HAMPSHIRE team.  

Blessings, and thanks for the QSO’s

Scott, K0DQ / A92Q


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