[3830] CQWW SSB VE2IM(VE3DZ) SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: VE2IM
Operator(s): VE3DZ
Station: VE2IM

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Zone 2
Operating Time (hrs): 45

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   66     6        7
   80:  429    19       61
   40: 1022    30      102
   20:  523    29       92
   15: 1582    34       99
   10: 1746    29      103
------------------------------
Total: 5368   147      464  Total Score = 8,576,607

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

This was my 13th year (and 17th CQ WW contest) of coming to Sept-Iles, Zone 2
since 1999.
I want to express my sincere thanks to Bob, VE3CWU who agreed to be my travel
companion (on a very short notice!) for this trip. As a matter of fact, he
ended up doing a 100% of driving, over 3000 km in total.
With all me recent changes and moves I did not have enough time to prepare and
I just decided to use my old SO2R set-up and wiring made for FT1000MP and IC756
radio years ago. I took my K3 as a spare radio this time.
We arrived in Sept-Iles in the late afternoon on Wednesday.  After unloading
all the stuff and doing initial set-up, I decided to check the antennas because
they were not used since this past January. Unfortunately the SWR on 20 meters
of the Mosley PRO37 was pretty bad and 15 meters looked funny with wider than
normal bandwidth. All other antennas / bands seemed to be Okay. Closer
measurements made with RigExpert AA-200 analyzer deiscovered that the beam has
perfect resonance... right on 12 MHz!
Next morning, contrary to the plan of putting up 80 and 160 m antennas I
decided to climb the tower and make visual inspection of the beam. However,
evrything looked good, actaully the 30+ year old antenna looked perfect for its
age. After a short break and a little reasearch we decided that the most
possible reason for that failure could be something (wasp? spider?) got stuck
inside the trap and therefore introducing some extra inductance which would
bring the resonance down... 
I climbed the tower two more times hoping to remove at least a driven element
from the boom and then disassemble the trap for closer inspection, but I was
unable to unscrew one half of the dual driven element because one of the blind
nuts inside the insulator would get loose and would not hold the tension.
After wasting more than a half of the day on that and getting dog tired, we
decided to leave the beam alone and go with the plan "B" by putting up a Hex
Beam that VE2TKH left on spot. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a support
longer than 25 feet, so we put it up very low above the ground.
After all these exercises, we only had time to put up a 80 m top loaded
vertical and no time left to jiggle with a 160 m antenna. In the contest I had
to use an existing low dipole for the top band.
As you may imagine, my motivation was a bit on a low end. With the start of the
Contest I additionally realized that despite of having very good SWR the hexbeam
appeared to be a very inefficient antenna for 20 (probably because of the low
height) and I could not get anything going on that band. After few tries I
found out that even though the Mosley beam was resonating around 12 MHz it was
more efficient than the Hexbeam. I had to break my SO2R setup and use small
ACOM 1010 amp only on 20 because it could produce about 500 watts of radited
power with about 120 watts of reflected power without tripping... In the other
words I HAD TO DO A SERIOUS S.O.A.B. EFFORT WITHOUT HAVING A 20 METERS
ANTENNA.
:-((
All in all, the conditions were pretty good, and with proper antenna I could
end up pretty close to my previos year's score, which was a record one for me
for SSB Contest, however, I ensded up where I ended up. The only highlight was
a feeling that I helped a lot of people with a relatively rare Zone.
Congratulations to Willie UA9BA on his oustanding score from Kazakhstan and to
Dave N2NL on the unbelieveable score from Oceania (at NH2T)! Good job!

My sympathies today are with the New Yorkers and all other friends from South
Of The Border who are auffering today because of Sandy.

Thanks to everyone who moved for me and for all the Q's.
Good luck in CW leg.

73, Yuri  VE3DZ


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