[3830] ARRLDX CW K9YC SO Unlimited HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: K9YC
Operator(s): K9YC
Station: K9YC

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: CA-SCV
Operating Time (hrs): 27
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   12    11
   80:   90    39
   40:  175    65
   20:  491    93
   15:  432    92
   10:  212    49
-------------------
Total: 1412   349  Total Score = 1,478,364

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

This was a fairly serious effort, but with time off for bad behavior 
with friends on Friday.  Operated the first two hours, then went into 
Santa Cruz with Rachelle to meet W6OAT, NI6T, W0YK and spouses at the 
reception for an exhibit by one of them at a local gallery, accompanied by
W0YK's excellent wine.  Lots of great conversation both at the reception and
later at a late dinner.  Had so much fun (and Ed's wine) at dinner that I
stayed off the air until about 6 am Saturday morning.

As to the contest -- from reading the observations of others I missed 
some of the best conditions Friday evening. On the other hand, I caught 
a great 20M opening to northern and eastern Europe plus Asian Russia 
Saturday night. Signals were not strong and had a lot of flutter, but I 
must have made a couple of hundred Qs, most of which seemed to be 100W 
home stations.  All that time off seems to have hurt with mults, 
especially on 40M -- both 80 and 40 were pretty stinko Saturday night to 
EU and SA.

Radios (K3s and Titan 425 amps) and antennas worked fine, and I continue to
work on building SO2R skills. 

The only downside of this contest is the absolutely STUPID use of alpha
characters to represent numbers as part of the exchange. REAL numbers provide
redundancy, and can help a lot under difficult conditions, but so-called cut
numbers do not. I'm fine with 5NN and T for zero, but beyond gets confusing
when the copy gets rough. The two dumbest combinations (and nothing else was
close) were AK and 4NT.  I have no idea WTF these idiots had on their minds
thinking them up, but they're clearly short of a full load. 

73, Jim K9YC


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