[3830] CQWW SSB K1LT SOAB(A) HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: K1LT
Operator(s): K1LT
Station: K1LT

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: Ohio EM89ps
Operating Time (hrs): 33

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   34    13       26
   80:   89    14       50
   40:  125    18       63
   20:  217    29       90
   15:  346    36      107
   10:  645    34      131
------------------------------
Total: 1456   144      467  Total Score = 2,522,819

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

97% of my contacts were by search and pounce.  The first day, I made
about 850 QSOs was by careful tuning.  Since 10 meters was in such
good shape, I decided to make my goal to see if I could reach DXCC in
24 hours (16 hours of operating), which I did with 6 entities to
spare.  I continued in careful-tuning mode until I quit about 0300Z
the second evening.

Sunday morning I had a hard time returning to the radio because I
didn't have a new goal, and nothing seemed particularly achievable.
But after a while, I decided to try to work as many multipliers as
possible.  For a little while I used the "search" feature of DX
Summit
to look for European countries that should be easy to work that I
hadn't worked yet.  But that is a very tedious way to get a spot, and
half the time the target had left before I could get there.

Eventually, I turned on the telnet/cluster/band-map feature in the
logging program and I discovered something new!  Since the band-map
highlights stations not yet worked and especially multipliers, I could
spend the rest of the afternoon pointing and shooting.  I did discover
that one *must* verify the identity of the target before calling,
because a large number of spots are broken.  I'm sorry I caused a few
dupes until I learned this.  But after a while, the checking becomes a
habit, and the typical errors are usually easy to see (transposed and
missing letters, optimistic miscopied prefixes, etc.).  Now I see why
some guys really hate the availability of this technology.

I am still using the 80 meter "cage" antenna which has 4 very narrow
stretches of low SWR connected by regions of high SWR.  Retuning the
antenna tuner every 25 kHz from 3600 to 3850 kHz is a drag.  A full
sized vertical will help, but that still doesn't avoid tuning issues.
How do you guys handle 75/80 meter bandwidth?

I think the bands were in better condition this year than in the
banner year 2011.  10 and 15 were great, 20 was not bad, 40 was not
bad, 80 was good and not noisy, and 160 was not bad and not noisy the
first night.  I have never seen so much red and orange on the P3.

I missed only zone 34.  I worked almost everything I heard except 9V
on 20, C91 and 9M6 on 10, and SV9 on 40 at the very end.  Even though
I did very little CQing, the surprise multiplier was 9H on 29 MHz.

See you all in the CW WW where I plan to be unassisted and hopefully
running a lot of the time.

Equipment: K3, P3, ETO 91B (thanks Jeff), X7 at 60 feet and verticals.


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