[3830] Rus DX OH0X(OH6KZP) SO CW HP

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                    Russian DX Contest

Call: OH0X
Operator(s): OH6KZP
Station: OH0X

Class: SO CW HP
QTH: Brando
Operating Time (hrs): 23
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Countries  Oblasts
----------------------------------------
  160:   237    0        42        51
   80:   417    0        59        58
   40:   600    0        69        63
   20:   616    0        77        70
   15:   414    0        79        61
   10:   191    0        57        49
----------------------------------------
Total:  2475    0       383       352  Total Score = 10,854,480

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

"Staying awake for 24 hours is a great way to connect with your inner psycho,"
said a friend's unrelated Facebook wall post on Friday morning. Fortunately
it's not quite that bad, but I did choose SOAB CW instead of SOAB SSB/MIX. Just
in case listening to non-stop splatter would cause my eyes to start twitching
(cf. Homer in "The Simpsons"!) :)

I find the RDXC to be an enjoyable event with a lot of fine Russian CW
operators. I set a new SOAB CW record as my goal and did manage to exceed the
old record, but with insufficient log checking margin. LZ8E quickly pulled
ahead of me at cqcontest.ru and did a superb score, congratulations!

Looking at my bandwise goals, I fell behind in QSOs on all bands apart from 15m
and 10m, where I also exceeded the expected multiplier count. All of this
despite (or partly because of overcompensating?) being handicapped by not being
able to use the main antennas of those two bands. Propagation was I think better
than it was last year, although the incoming CME clearly impacted things for the
worse on Sunday. For example the UA0 stations on 15m came in with strong arctic
flutter since the path from here to there crosses the polar region. It still
made for some interesting condx, however, and during the last hour I added
nearly 1M to the score by working loads of weak but new oblast multipliers on
10m. 

On the 4-hour drive back home I was even treated to the nice spectacle of
visual aurora. In Finland that is quite rare down south in OH1/OH2, it normally
being the exclusive enjoyment of the guys up north in OH8/OH9.

Then to the "collected explanations," as the Finnish saying goes.

This contest entailed a number of technical troubles that really grate away at
you when you're trying to give it your all. Just before the start the logging
computer monitor gave a "warning" by going blank for a couple of seconds at a
time, sporadically, but during the contest this fortunately happened only
towards the very end. Win-Test/MK2R+ also had some issue throughout the race,
with the CW speed sometimes suddenly rising to 40 WPM when transmission
started.

The worst episode, however, was when the logging computer froze around 05z on
Sunday morning. I had changed the Radio 2 band to 10m, and the first
transmission there caused everything to freeze. The computer did not respond to
Ctrl+Alt+Del, so I then turned it off with the switch. When Windows started up
again, Win-Test would immediately crash every time I tried to start it by
clicking the icon.

So there I was, 2000 QSOs in the pocket and 7 hours to go, with no logging
program left...! During the following hour, after first determining not to
quit, I resigned to moving the log file to my laptop, dropping most of the
SO2R, and sending CW manually with the paddle for the rest of the contest. 

While I was operating in this new manner, I thought I'd try the Windows "safe
mode" boot to see if Win-Test would start in that environment after all, and in
fact it did. I then restored the Windows system registry back to what it was on
Saturday morning just before the contest, and miraculously enough, Win-Test
worked smoothly again after a normal computer boot. The only explanation I have
is that the meltdown and my ensuing hard switch shutdown caused some variable or
other to be lost or not to be written into the Windows registry, leading to the
subsequent software start-up malfunction.

Anyway, it was quite the feeling sitting there sleep-deprived and seeing your
logging computer refuse to run the logging program, the key to controlling
everything! Never expected that one, and it took some time to sort out the
options in my head. Lost nearly one hour completely and then another partly
while working paddle CW and fiddling to fix the issue with the main computer.

All in all, it was still a nice one. Thanks to the Brändö Island Group for
letting me use their fine station again, and thanks to all for being on the
air!

Kim OH6KZP


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