[3830] CQWW CW W9XT SOAB(A) LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: W9XT
Operator(s): W9XT
Station: W9XT

Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: Wisconsin
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   10     5        4
   80:   66    15       47
   40:  213    28       86
   20:  356    31       97
   15:  367    32      102
   10:  179    25       82
------------------------------
Total: 1191   136      418  Total Score = 1,873,074

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

I had not done an all band effort in a number of  years and wanted to do one for
this event but needed to get some antenna work done. I got the 80M shunt feed 
put back on the tower just before I had to leave for Thanksgiving with the
family  and did not have time to find the optimum tap point.  Later I found
that it messed up the 160M sloper, something I half expected.  This meant I
needed to run these bands through a tuner, and I don’t have any that can 
handle high power.  I decided to go low power assisted at that point.

Then Thursday night the rotor on the main tower with the TH-7 failed.  I could
turn it but the indicator pot must have failed.  The weather and other
obligations made an attempted repair out of the question. This was not a good
start!

The plan was to start on 10 and work my way down as the bands closed.  Ten was
already dead and 15M on its last legs.  The first night competition  was tough
on the low bands, but 20 had stations popping up to keep things interesting. 
The rotor problems slowed me down on these because they were coming from
multiple directions.  I would estimate where beam was pointing (~7 seconds to
turn 45 degrees). A piece of tape on the rotor box meter showed where I thought
it was.  Every so often I would have to go outside to see where it was actually
pointing to “recalibrate” the tape. All this meant I didn't move the beam
all that much which hurt the rate and multipliers.

The European sunrise opening was only fair on 40 & 80.  The 160M sloper that
was good enough for a top ten finish low power in the last Stew Perry TBDC
effort barely got out of the back yard. I just got a few close in multipliers
plus KH7X.

Conditions were only fair on the high bands. I thought 10M would be a bigger
factor but signals were weak and there was not much really long haul stuff.  I
spent most of the time S&Ping  on 15 & 20.  By afternoon conditions were
improved.  The Asian opening was good on 15 and 20. I managed to get a few
JA’s on 10 but that was about it on that band. Later, 40M was as good as I
had seen it. I was not able to generate a CQ run, but kept a decent S&P rate.

Sunday the higher bands were better and I got some good runs going on 15.  Ten
continued to disappoint. I missed a lot of countries and zones I normally work.
 Fifteen was my money band with 20 close behind.  Forty was a nice surprise with
higher QSO and multipliers totals than I expected.  Who would have expected my
40 meter line score would beat my 10M totals at the “top” of the sunspot
cycle? The shunt fed tower on 80 worked pretty well. The QSO total for 80 was
about what my goal was but the multiplier total was higher.

My goal was 2 million points. I came close. It has probably been almost 30
years since I did a low power all band effort, and made some mistakes. I had to
re-learn a few things. Despite a lot of frustrations  it was a lot of fun.


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