[3830] WPX CW F/W1NN SOAB LP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: F/W1NN
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: F/W1NN

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: Tours, France
Operating Time (hrs): 36

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:   34
   80:  200
   40:  440
   20:  591
   15:  243
   10:    2
------------
Total: 1510  Prefixes = 682  Total Score = 2,083,704

Club: North Coast Contesters

Comments:

What’s the radio world coming to when the big US stations are stronger on 80
Meters than they are on 20??  

At least that’s the way it was here in France during this WPX.  A few US
stations were starting to move the S meter on 15 and 20 during the last few
hours of the weekend, but for most of the contest they were down in the mud or
completely absent.  (10 is not even worth mentioning in this context since I
never heard a single NA station there.)  K3LR was doing a 15 meter single band
effort, so I ran across him numerous times, but I don’t recall him ever being
over S5 or S6.  Yes, that’s on my modest dipole, but in more normal
conditions, Tim would be well over S9 here.  In contrast to the awful high band
conditions, both nights the big US East Coast stations were blasting through on
80 like they were locals.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I wanted to explain how I ended up doing
this contest from France.  Making a very long story short, I had a business
trip to Germany in mid-June and decided to find a place to rent somewhere in
Europe for the month prior to that business trip, thus allowing me to operate
the contest and then spend a couple of weeks touring and enjoying the local
life.  Being semi-retired allows me to do things like this now.  I seriously
considered Ireland and spent a lot of time searching for a place there, but I
just couldn’t find anything I thought would work.  So after a long search, I
ended up here in France in a remote but charming country house surrounded by
trees whose owner was willing to trust that I would not damage her place with
my radio activities.  Given the way attractive properties in Europe get booked
up for the warm months, I had to reserve my flight, commit to the house and pay
for the rental back in December and January.  

Preparing for this kind of suitcase radio operation is somewhat like preparing
for Field Day.  You want to make sure you are ready to cope with problems and
have everything you might need, but you don’t want to bring unnecessary
items.  I started making a list several months ago and managed to squeeze most
of the radio stuff into one suitcase, with clothing and other essentials going
into a second one.  I brought my K3 and laptop in my carry-on.

The hamlet where my rental house is located is about three hours from Paris,
and getting here in my rental car on unfamiliar French roads was my first
challenge.  I got lost a few times and my Visa card would not work at the
expressway toll gate, causing a few uncomfortable moments, but I finally
reached the house about 7 hours after my plane touched down at Charles de
Gaulle Airport.  I was tired but happy to have arrived in one piece.  

Often when I do something like this, I have little time to spare, but this time
I arrived in France on the Sunday before the contest, giving me five full days
to put up antennas, get things working, do some shopping and get some sleep.

The house sits on the edge of a remote hamlet consisting of six houses (half of
which are unoccupied).  There is only one neighbor whom I have not actually
seen.  Picturesque farmland and fields border the property on three sides and
it is generally flat, rolling countryside.  The house sits on over an acre
there is an old stone barn and several other outbuildings.  

The property is surrounded by trees and hedges but the spacing of the trees is
not ideal for antennas.  I spent the first day surveying the grounds and trying
to figure out where to put the antennas.  I brought four wire antennas (they are
light and easily fit into a suitcase) and a telescoping element for a vertical,
and put up three of the wire antennas using the sling shot/fishing reel method
to get the wires in the treetops.  All three wires were supported by a single
large tree in the middle of the back yard about 50 feet high and an equal
distance from the house.  The antennas were a 205-foot G5RV, a 40 meter dipole,
a 20 meter dipole and a vertical that can be used for 10-20.  The G5RV works on
all bands but is especially good on 80 and 160, so I put it up first on Tuesday
and made sure it was working.  The other antennas went up on successive days.  I
set up the radio on the kitchen table and by Friday I was ready to go. 

I have discovered on previous trips that operating in Europe is very different
from operating in North America.  That’s the main reason why it is fun, I
suppose.  Probably the biggest difference is the 2 AM Saturday starting time. 
This is always tough on me since I am usually too excited to get much sleep
right before a contest starts so I am already tired when the starting gun goes
off.   (I much prefer the 9 AM Saturday starting time that they have in Japan.)
 Fortunately, single ops in WPX have 12 hours of break time, so that really
helps. 

I really was not sure what kind of off-time strategy to use, so I decided to go
all out for the first day and then decide when to take my breaks.  I ended up
taking a 1 hour break after 13 hours of operating and then another break two
hours later, leaving 10 hours of breaks for the second day.  If I had thought
this out more carefully I could have done a better job, but this is hindsight.

The one thing that I did not anticipate was how hard it would be for others to
copy my call.  F/call seems simple enough to me, but at least half of the
stations I called needed at least one repeat and sometimes three or four.  I
started to wonder if some hams simply do not know what -..-. (slash) means in
Morse, because some simply couldn’t get my call and I had to give up.  One
station I called actually went QRT after I called several times.  (I took over
his CQ frequency so it was okay with me.)  I personally worked 10-15 portable
stations in this event and portable operation is quite common in Europe, so EU
stations ought to be accustomed to calls like mine, but a significant
percentage of EU stations had great trouble with my call.  Happily, most US ops
had little or no trouble.    

10 Meters was a complete bust.  There were some stations there but they were
mostly stations a couple of thousand miles away working very deep EU pileups,
and it would have taken too much time to work them.  15 was also challenging
and probably the biggest disappointment of the contest.  I had expected 500-600
contacts there running Europeans.  It was filled with stations but most of the
time skip was too long to get any runs going, so it was very slow going.  As
you can tell from the breakdown above, 20 and 40 were the money bands.  About
20% of contacts on both of these bands were with North America.  On 80, it was
15% N.A. contacts.  I probably should have worked 80 harder, but it seemed that
evenings when there is a lot of activity there, was also the best time for
trying to work N.A. on 15 and 20.  In fact, in this contest, from about 8 PM
local onwards, five bands were useful, making band decisions very difficult.  I
really could have used SO2R.  I gave 40 the attention it deserved, but I
probably should have spent a little more time on 80, given that I was pretty
loud there.  I was constantly surprised to be among the first stations to be
answered by CQing N.A. stations.

Overall, my rates were nothing special.  My best hour was a mere 73, while only
10 hours saw rates of 50 or better.  Such is life for a station with nothing but
wires and 100 watts.

I really enjoyed this radio adventure in France.  Now that the contest is over,
I have put the radio away and will spend my remaining days here concentrating on
the cultural and gastronomic attractions all around me.  There is more to life
than just radio.

Thanks for the contacts and see you all in the next big one â€" IARU in
July.

73, Hal F/W1NN


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