[3830] WPX SSB P49Y(AE6Y) SOAB HP

[webform at b41h.net]

                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: P49Y
Operator(s): AE6Y
Station: P49Y

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Aruba
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:   16
   40:  720
   20: 1343
   15: 1674
   10: 1666
------------
Total: 5419  Prefixes = 1273  Total Score = 23,149,505

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

A very enjoyable contest.  Condx here were pretty good, except that 80 for some
reason seemed to be a noisy mess, and I could never get anything going there
(in contrast to a WPX phone a few years ago when I had 500 plus Qs on that
band). Congratulations to the other serious contesters on from Aruba: P41P and
P40W for great efforts.

There were three high points of the contest for me:
1) 10m Saturday afternoon, during which we had our usual Mideastern opening. 
It's hard to be blase about being called by 2 JYs and an OD5!

2) 20m Saturday night (circa 0000-0400Z) which was open all over the place at
various times and produced a steady stream of interesting callers.

3) 15m Sunday morning (1400-1800Z), when I had a delightful 4-hour run of EUs
on 21185, with a clear, quiet frequency, many new prefixes, and a very
well-behaved pileup (e.g., if I said something like: "the station ending
November", which usually produces bedlam in an EU pileup, this time it really
worked and only one or two stations would come back).  Then I switched to 10,
and it was like going to the zoo -- with many casual, not-in-the-contest "Just
stopped by to say hello, what do you need from me?" operators.  The contrast
was amazing.  But you gotta love them also, since they put points on the
board.

WPX Phone is a real test of phonetics.  I hereby suggest greater use of the
geographic phonetic alphabet.  For example "Mexico Germany" is much more
intelligible than "Mike Golf."  Similarly the numbers in Germanic languages
like English are not differentiated enough for intelligibility in the presence
of interference.  Thus, "five" sounds like "nine" and the others are too
monosyllabic also.  It is obvious that, for example, Spanish and Italian work
much better.  My modest suggestion is that we should all use: zero, uno, due,
tres, quattro, cinco, six, siete, otto or ocho, nova or nueve. Fantasy: doing
so would lessen necessary repeats and up the scores considerably.

Back to reality, I can't say enough for the efforts of neighbor W2GD, who spent
several hours on our 65-foot Rohn 45 tower tower Friday morning.  With bumbling
assistance from myself as ground crew, John not only diagnosed and fixed a bad
jumper on the 20m monobander, but also diagnosed and swapped out a broken
rotor!  In return I helped him on Monday to take down his temporary wire
antennas in his nasty cunucu (the cactusy land in Aruba), but that wasn't
skilled labor at all.  Thanks, John, for help in the true amateur spirit.  

As always, Aruba is a great place for socializing, this time with dinners and
camaraderie with Carl and Sue (P40V, P40YL), JP and Chris (P43A, P43C), John
(W2GD, P40W), Lisandro (P43L) and Lissette, Martin and Truus (P49MR, P49MRS),
Stefan (DF7ZS, P41P in the contest), and a surprise post-contest dinner visitor
on business, Mike (K9NW).

73 and thanks to all participants,
 Andy, AE6Y, P49Y
[Rate sheet and full report will be on www.arubaqth.com]

Rig: 2xK3/P3, "manual" Alpha 87A and 86
Software: CQPWIN ver. 12.5
Ant: 2 el 10, 5 el 15, 4 el 20, 2 el 40, 1 el 80, C31, beverages


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