[3830] ARRLDX CW PI4TUE M/S HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: PI4TUE
Operator(s): ON9CC, PA0SHY, PA5MW, PC5A, PE2HD
Station: PI4TUE

Class: M/S HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 47.25

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   95    24
   80:  311    42
   40:  744    55
   20:  835    58
   15:  650    58
   10:  637    48
-------------------
Total: 3272   285  Total Score = 2,797,560

Club: Bavarian Contest Club

Comments:

Antennas: 160m sloper at 220ft (RX: BOG, 80M long @10cm from the ground), 80m full
size horizontal loop at 220ft, 40m dipole @200ft, 20-10 3el SteppIR @ 220ft

Rig: Ten-Tec ORION
Power: 400w

The short summary is that our team had an exciting weekend with many highlights
like a successful BOG experiment, an efficient additional 40M dipole, great
pre-contest dinner, excellent espresso & cappuccino and last but not least a
new station record nr of QSO's and score in a ARRLDX contest @ PI4TUE.

The PACC contest which was the weekend before the ARRLDX CW sort of acts as a
general rehearsal for our favorite contest of the year. For the PACC we laid
down a BOG (about 80m) literally on the ground so that people would not trip
over it. Reception was not as good as expected compared to a similar BOG at
10cm from the ground which we used for ARRLDX CW & SSB 2012. So for this years
contest we made a few modification compared to the PACC setup:
- thicker wire (1.5mm copper litze instead of 0.15mm teflon coated wire)
- 10cm off the ground
- properly terminated with a suitable resistor value to get better front/back
The first night the BOG worked better than we had previously experienced,
especially having it configured for diversity reception in the ORION I. You
could most of the times hear stations only on the BOG (left ear) and then
signal would quickly shift to the TX antenna (right ear) and back again, e.g.
on 40M. The second night however we felt that reception was less than the night
before. When we dismantled the BOG right after the end of the contest we
discovered why; some one (idiot) had ripped off the termination resistor,
meaning we had lost our front to back. For the SSB part we will have to make
the termination point more idiot proof...

During the PACC we had put up a 40M horizontal loop in order to get some more
gain and lower noise level. It turned out the positive effects compared to the
vertical where marginal and for the ARRLDX CW we decided to add a simple DIPOLE
instead, pointed at about 300 deg. When tuning it we noticed a strong coupling
effect with the HF2V on 40M. It's best to hang the end of such dipole as far
away as possible from a vertical. During the first hours the signals on the
dipole were always louder than the vertical so we actually used only the dipole
on 40M.

Our highest score ever was the one from 2010 which became the target score to
beat. We used and monitored Athena (a nice LIVE contest analyzing tool for N1MM
by PC5M) and saw that we had exactly the same score by Sunday at 11Z. It made me
feel that a new record was not going to happen... But help was on the way when
finally...! 10M opened up as it should in a solar maximum. The next six hours
were the most rewarding to the team; great runs with several hours of more than
130Q's/h. At our three-band-yagi-and-wires station we have not seen these kind
of rates. When it got dark and 10M faded everyone was still thrilled and
feeling energetic as ever. That 10M run made the difference, we ended the
contest with a new station record of 3272 QSO's and 2.8M points, a score
increase of >10% compared to 2010 (when 10M didn't open).

Some facts from the log:
The following stations where worked on 6 bands (46, our highest number ever by
far):
AA1K, AA3B, AB2E, K0DQ, K0TV, K1AR, K1FWE, K1KI, K1LI, K1LT, K1LZ, K1RX, K1TO,
K2QMF, K3LR, K3NM, K4XS, K5GN, K5ZD, K8AZ, K9CT, N2NT, N2TK, N3BNA, N3QE, N3RR,
N4YDU, NE3F, NF1O, NN3W, NQ4I, NR4M, NY4A, VB3E, VE3JM, VY2TT, W1CSM, W2CG,
W2FU, W2RE, W2XL, W2YC, W3LPL, W5RU, WC1M, WK1Q

Top 3 of Sections worked (across all bands):
PA: 252
NY: 208
FL: 184

Bottom 3 of Sections worked:
NF: 3
MB: 2
WY: 1

Clean sweep of US states per band: non

We can't hardly wait to relive last weekends experience in the coming SSB part.
Hope to set another station record.

73
-- Aurelio, PC5A
ps. audio clippings of each QSO are available on request (I will send them
after the log submission deadline).


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