[3830] CQWW CW DH8BQA SOSB(A)/10 HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: DH8BQA
Operator(s): DH8BQA
Station: DH8BQA

Class: SOSB(A)/10 HP
QTH: JO73ce
Operating Time (hrs): 23

Summary:
 Band  QSOs   Zones  Countries
-------------------------------
  160:  (10)               
   80: (112)               
   40:  (73)               
   20:  (52)               
   15:  (20)               
   10:  1338    39      142
-------------------------------
Total:  1338    39      142  Total Score = 576,485

Club: Bavarian Contest Club

Comments:

RIG: Elecraft K3, PA + 6 ele OWA Yagi @ 18m/60ft height

Another one is over. As a professing 10 m addict my choice of band was clear,
of course: do contests 10 m SB as long as conditions will allow. :-) Speaking
of condx they have been good but certainly not excellent. It was a lot worse
than during WWDX SSB four weeks ago (e.g. 117 x zone 3 in SSB vs. 29 x zone 3
in CW with same equipment). Taking into account that we will certainly not see
good condx on 10 m again during the next 9-10 years this is probably rather
complaining on a very high level. :-)

Saturday morning started quite slow with just about 300 QSOs during the first 6
hours. That's always a 'problem' overhere, not enough JAs (compared to US) and
astoundingly also less UA9/0 than anticipated. Enjoyed some nice US runs
Saturday afternoon although my CW skills still need some improvement (that's
why I like to run Assisted in CW). To my suprise the band was open until about
18:30z overhere, a nice over Friday evening when it closed around 16:30z
already! Ended up with 800 QSOs on Saturday so set 1400 QSOs as an overall
goal.

Well, Sunday was much worse. The band opened about 45 mins later and made just
150 QSOs during the first 6 hours. Couldn't get much going. Conditions were
still quite nice Sunday morning/noon with up to 2 x echos counted on a few big
gun signals! Almost everybody stronger than S3 had at least one echo during
high noon. As fantastic as it sounds it makes things really difficult,
especially on CW. It took a few minutes to work UA2FL for a mult with going
down to just 16 wpm speed to make it easier. Thanks for your patience, Vlad!
Others gave up with my echo'd signal so I missed a few usually easy EU mults.
But honestly I can understand the frustration if you get called by someone with
a nice 579 signal but cannot read it due to echos and giving up after a few
tries. Anyway, I took a few seconds every now and then to check my own echos
... really nice and almost as fascinating as hearing your own echos back from
moon on VHF. :-)

Sunday afternoon was a bit better concerning QSO numbers than the morning but
the band closed already 1.5 hours earlier than Saturday so I couldn't quite
reach my goal of 1400, a few ones missing. As others already reported condx
were considerably worse on Sunday. From those 29 x zone 3 wkd during the
contest as mentioned above 25 were on Saturday, just 4 on Sunday! And those
were very weak (as almost everybody from the US on Sunday compared to
Saturday).

Some more notes: Astoundingly no KH6 via LP on Saturday although condx were
very favourable for that and a number of QSOs reported. But I did work 2 x KH6
via LP on Sunday in worse condx. During the early morning hours just a few guys
from SA (i.e. CW5W) via LP, there was much more during WWDX SSB. Also JA
longpath was almost completely missing this time, just 2 QSOs made. But nice to
be called by VK6DU long path Saturday afternoon. Thanks for the nice cluster
spot! :-) Sorrily he was the only one calling in ... Packet/skimmer pileups are
getting worse year after year. :-( Observed a few times that after a new mult
gets on all the big guns jump to the spot and start calling over and over
without listening. Although I really enjoyed full band maps from skimmer I
often wished back times without it. Things were certainly easier back then
concerning the pileups. So I missed about 10 more mults or so as it wasn't
worth it spending time listening to the mess and waiting for a QSO chance.

Besides my 10 m SOSB entry I did hand out a few QSOs on the other bands, too.
That was to assist friends as well as to pick up a few new DXCC band points
here and there. Sunday evening did a few more QSOs running on the other bands
just to reach 1.600 QSOs in total. Although that will not help my SB result it
made us jump over the 20k QSOs mark this year from our modest contest station.
:-)

Thanks for all the QSOs, guys! Looking forward to work everybody again!

73, Olli - DH8BQA


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