[3830] WPX CW VA2EW SOSB80 HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: VA2EW
Operator(s): VA2EW
Station: VA2EW

Class: SOSB80 HP
QTH: Montreal
Operating Time (hrs): 15H40

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:  431
   40:     
   20:     
   15:     
   10:     
------------
Total: 1958  Prefixes = 279  Total Score = 546,282

Club: Contest Group du Quebec

Comments:

I did not want to redo for the sixth consecutive year the same AB contest with
the same antennas even with a better propagation. I am in the process to
improve all my antenna farm, so as the 80m wire 4 SQ was just finished last
week I was very excited to try it.
Then I decided to run in the monoband 80m category, the best way at the same
time to learn how to use a new antenna and about this 80m band that was the
band I have neglected the most until now.

For the first time since I am at this qth, I had the felling to exist on the
80m band. You know what I mean : My runs are not fading anymore within 10mn,
nobody starts a run on my run frequency, some weak DX are answering to my run
giving me sometimes a rewarding #001 and the running stations are answering
fast when I call them in S&P even when they are weak.

I was a little anxious about the results because my land is very uneven and so
for the radials and of course the vertical wires in the trees cannot be
straight vertical at the exact position in the square.
As the project was mostly for TX, I knew that a 4SQ is far more tolerant in TX
than in RX and I was not expecting much for RX but I had a great surprise when
seeing that the RX has a fair directivity and a better Rear to Back (around
15dB ) than the beverages (around 10dB ).
Actually using for RX the 4SQ and the beverages in diversity mode was a must,
the two kinds of antennas are very complementary.
So I am very satisfied and I find the result better than expected.

The WPX contest by itself is not the best one for a 80m mono, it is a 40/20m
contest and the use of the 80m band with short nights is very optional for most
of the contesters so we got too few visitors at my taste and only 4 hundreds
qso's were made. BTW it was funny to have some big stations with strong signals
asking me for a repeat of my serial number considering it was unusually low...

The band was very noisy on all azimuths the first day because of the storms,
the second day it was only noisy from West and the European signals were very
good and easy to copy.
I must add that the elements were against me this WE : first day I started only
at 1H30 UTC because of a lighting storm staying just above the qth, the second
day a ''security'' problem in my neighbor’s just at the time of EU opening
and today 1 hour before the end, a main power cutoff...
So if this participation will not be a record it had provided good learning
with some pleasant moments


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