[3830] CQ160 CW PJ2T(K8ND) Single Op Assisted HP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW

Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): K8ND
Station: PJ2T

Class: Single Op Assisted HP
QTH: Curacao
Operating Time (hrs): 25:43

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 1259  State/Prov = 58  Countries = 64  Total Score = 1,521,340

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

"Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me"

Regular contesting partner W8WTS could not make the trip for this one, so I was
allowed the opportunity of a Single-op effort at the PJ2T station. This is a
relatively rare opportunity, as we usually have many people looking for a slot
on contest teams. This is the second time I've been able to do this in the CQWW
160 CW Contest, the first being in 2006. This is my 20th visit to Signal Point
PJ2T since 2002, the 6th for this contest.

I opted this time for the Assisted category, as 1) it suits my passion for CW
Skimmer technology, and 2) it is the category for which PJ2T does not currently
hold the South America record.

Instead of banking sleep on Friday (as I planned and should have done) I was
fussing with trying to get CW Skimmer installed on the "hot backup" station's
PC to serve as a third CW Skimmer to provide backup for the two running on my
laptop. The PC refuses to properly identify my SDR-IQ radio, and I never
accomplished anything but losing sleep, which became apparent to me in the wee
hours of night 1.

We normally would have our DX Engineering 4-square RX antenna available to
cover the directions not covered by our two permanent Beverage receive
antennas. However, the DXE 4-square is erected "Field Day" style when needed,
as it is located on the neighboring property and subject to vandalism or theft
if left installed permanently. Since I was here at Signal Point alone, it was
not practical to deploy and properly retrieve/stow it in the time available. I
appologize to anyone who called in vain, particularly in the Pacific and South
America (this also applies for anyone missed in the Stew in December, same
reason)!

What to say about conditions? Noise conditions were excellent here on the first
night, something I don't often get to say from this location as we are only
12-degrees North of the Equator with temperatures in the mid-80s all night. I
was able to work North American stations by hearing full calls rather than
employing the slow and taxing "letter mining" method. However, QSB was quick,
and once a call was heard the station was often dipping down before the report
was complete. The second night was similar, but more noisy on my end, more
typical of the noisy Caribbean area and with even faster and deeper QSB.

Europe was another matter. As usual, we were "frequency sharing" with European
CQers for the first many hours. Then, at about 0200Z, the European end of my
frequency got quiet! This is usually the cue for the European QSOs to start
building in the log, but this year there were few EU callers, and no pileups
that I could hear. The stations that called were LOUD here, but seemed less
able to hear me. I worked 113 European stations the first night, and only 203
in all. Part of this second night performance might have to do with the feeding
frenzy with North America when the conditions changed. Both nights, when I
"pounced" on a new multiplier, even though they be very LOUD here, they were
not able to hear me. This is not usual, outside of first few hours after the
start of the contest (when Europe feeds on itself).

I note lots of activity from South America, with many HK and LU stations! I
only worked only one YV, very unusual. 

I noted, as I had during the Stew Perry in December, that many USA stations
were coming in louder on the 1000-foot Europe Beverage than on the USA
Beverage. These were not only station on the US east coast (which might be
understandable), but even stations in mid-America. Very odd. 

The CW Skimmers, one each listening on the two Beverages 100% or the time, were
doing their usual service of keeping watch for new multipliers and new stations
to be worked. I was able to pop off to a spot on the bandmap and work the
spotted station and continue my CQing with little delay for S&P. By 0730Z,
there were no workable multiplier spots (from PacketCluster or Skimmers) left
on the band for me, so I started pouncing on and working un-worked stations
that were spotted. On the second night, I was constantly picking-off new
multipliers and stations when seen.

As usual, our DSL service crashed: once on the first night, six times on the
second. Each crash required a jog to the bedroom to re-boot the DSL modem to
restore PacketCluster service. Jim W8WTS resolved most of these instances
several years ago with brute force filtering, but the service here is
inherently unreliable whether we are transmitting or not.  Gotta put a remote
reset capability on that modem...

I purchased a powerful new Dell laptop explicitly to serve as a CW Skimmer
server for my trips, and it has been a disappointment. While my previous laptop
would process three instances of CW Skimmer in heavy-demand contest conditions,
this one will stall with more than two even though it has a more powerful
quad-core CPU. I attribute this to Windows 7 and possibly to the USB
hardware/drivers, but have not resolved it as yet. On Sunday morning, as the
contest was essentialy ended for me, the laptop finally gave me a final insult,
announcing that it's hard disk was dying and I'd better fetch anything I cared
about (and spent days installing) from the doomed hard disk PDQ. Then, the
Windows Backup utility refused to perform a a backup to the 1 TB USB disk that
I had on hand. The "fix" Microsoft provides for the problem with that error
code would not install on my laptop. So, I manually fetch anything I'd changed
during my stay (including all my photos). Then the hard disk crashed, the
partition table was trashed, and the laptop became a doorstop. At least it had
the courtesy of waiting until sunrise to die. If it had died during the
contest, taking my Skimmers with it, it would be resting on the coral reef in
the Caribbean at the bottom of the 37-foot cliff in front of Signal Point.

My final score was excellent for the conditions, but fell 150 QSOs and 20
multipliers short of my pre-contest goals. Top rates were down a bit, two hours
over 100, two more over 90, and four over 80. Second night rates were down
considerably compared to those typical over past operations from here, probably
due to the disillusionment by casual operators after the disasterous conditions
the first night.  I was disappointed to miss VE4 (had one calling, but could
not pull out the suffix), KL7 (none heard), VK (none heard). 

           QSO      %
    NA    1018    80.9
    SA      24     1.9
    EU     203    16.1
    AS       4     0.3
    OC       8     0.6
    AF       2     0.2

Thanks, as always to the other members of the Caribbean Contesting Consortium,
who have built the PJ2T station and kept it running for the past twn years -
not an insignificant accomplishement in the corrosive Caribbean area! Special
thanks to Topband contesting partner Jim W8WTS, who was buried under work, but
assisted with getting a reliable PacketCluster link to his W8WTS-3 node.

Primary Station:    Elecraft K3, Ten Tec Titan III (2 x 4CX800)
Hot Backup Station: Yaesu FT-2000, AL-1200

Antennas
  TX:  Inv-L (50-feet vertical, then sloping up to 95-feet) w/60 radials
  RX:  1000-foot Europe Beverage, 650-foot USA/JA Beverage

CW Skimmers Radios:  SDR-IQ x 2
CW Skimmer Software: Afreet CW Skimmer v1.71
Skimmer Spot Consolidation: K1TTT WinTelnetX
PacketCluster Server: CC User / W8WTS-3 Cluster

"Can't Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me"
"Sleep is for the Weak"


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