[3830] CQWW CW W6YX M/S HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: W6YX
Operator(s): NF1R, K2YY, KZ2V, ND2T, K6SF, W6RK, N7MH, K9YC
Station: W6YX

Class: M/S HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   34     6        6
   80:  246    24       58
   40:  966    36      120
   20:  935    37      126
   15:  738    34      122
   10:  334    31       97
------------------------------
Total: 3253   168      529  Total Score = 6,452,129

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

Almost everything at the station was working this weekend.  I had originally
planned to have 4 transmitters and use WriteLog's software lockouts on paired
same-band radios for run and mult stations.  Then I reread this year's rules
and realized that we needed hardware lockouts so back to two transmitting
radios with a third radio for spotting.

It turned out that we didn't have enough operators to sit at 4 radios anyway
but we could have set them up as SO2R stations.  I wonder if a Micro-2R SO2R
box qualifies as a hardware lockout for same-band operation of two radios if
all keying is done by a single paddle and computer?  We'll have to build or buy
a hardware lockout box if we want to do this seriously in the future.

Our strategy was to have the mult station lead the run station into a new band
opening.  This worked fairly well but on 80 and 10 meters we only worked a
single station in most European countries because the run rate was better on
other bands while these bands were open to EU.  Hopefully we don't have too
many errors since we'll lose mults.  We worked 425 total Q's on the mult
station.

We had the run station manned for 48 hours and the mult station for 33 hours. 
During some of the one-op hours I tried to do SO2R to work the few spotted
mults.  The best "run" strategy was often to click and pounce which was usually
interrupted while mult-pouncing on the other radio.

Our 160 "C" antenna was fixed before the contest but it still doesn't work
well.  I couldn't get an answer from W3LPL or K3LR so we missed zone 5.  HK1NA
was S9+ but continued to CQ whenever we called.  I had a small run of JAs on
the first morning which was surprising considering the poor performance to the
east.

The most memorable parts of the contest for me were when I tuned across mults
that hadn't yet been spotted to RBN.  The first evening I tuned across a weak
signal calling CQ on 40 which turned out to be 5H3EE.  I called him and we
completed our Q and then a huge pileup appeared on frequency.  On the second
morning I tuned the high end of 15, at 21139, and found TR8CA CQing for a quick
Q.

We had a few hours near the end of the contest with 3 operators.  The third
operator was useful in refreshing spots for stations with no pileup so that the
run op had a higher click and pounce rate by avoiding clicking onto pileups or
abandoned frequencies.

Thanks to Jim/K9YC for joining us and to the rest of our regulars.  Thanks to
all for the Q's.

73,
-Mike, N7MH


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