[3830] CQWW SSB N4TZ/9 SOAB LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: N4TZ/9
Operator(s): N4TZ
Station: N4TZ

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: IN
Operating Time (hrs): 41.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   23     8       12
   80:  108    17       54
   40:  168    24       72
   20:  289    26       90
   15:  315    32       95
   10:  675    28      103
------------------------------
Total: 1578   135      426  Total Score = 2,508,792

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

OPERATING TIME: 41:29:08
            CQ COUNTER: 1179
            RUN/SEARCH: 293/1296 Qs
      UNIQUE CALLSIGNS: 1082

              SOFTWARE: TR4W v.4.246 http://www.tr4w.com

  BAND   Raw QSOs   Valid QSOs   Points Countries     Zones
 __________________________________________________________
 160SSB        23           23       43        12         8
  80SSB       109          108      274        54        17
  40SSB       170          168      475        72        24
  20SSB       293          289      827        90        26
  15SSB       317          315      892        95        32
  10SSB       677          675     1961       103        28
 __________________________________________________________

 Totals      1589         1578     4472       426       135

    Final Score = 2508792 points.


                              Continent List

                    160    80    40    20    15    10   ALL
                    ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---   ---
      USA calls =     3     1     1     1     2     2    10
   Canada calls =    10    27     9     7    16    17    86
       NA calls =     7    21    17    30    32    42   149
       SA calls =     2     5     9    44    42    51   153
     Euro calls =     0    48   111   184   171   497  1011
  African calls =     1     6     7    12    10    13    49
    Asian calls =     0     0     3    14     7    14    38
    Japan calls =     0     0     6     0    26    30    62
    Ocean calls =     0     1     7     1    11    11    31

    Total calls =    23   109   170   293   317   677  1589

Guess we had a double peak on this sunspot cycle.  Too bad I
didn't fully use the great conditions.  The second day was 
relatively disappointing here due to some hardware problems.

The first hardware problem I knew about before the contest.
During the ARRL CW contest I found that one of the Orion's 
would have a very temporary power output problem - one 
fellow said it sounded like the amplifier relay wasn't 
picking up - but of course I'm barefoot here.  I found that
after several hours of heating the problem would start to
appear fairly reliably on cw.  Didn't seem to appear on SSB
so operated the ARRL SSB and WPX SSB with no aparent problem.
Of course, the power varies all the time with  voice, so
it's harder to see on the 'scope.

Well, the problem started to show after only an hour or so
the first night out, so basically down to one radio. I 
could find stations to work on the bad radio and use the
swap radio function in TR4W to put the good radio on the
desired station, but couldn't cq while s&ping using that
technique, so of limited use here.

The second hardware problem wasn't anticipated.  I found
out Saturday aftenoon that the prop pitch rotor turning
the top 20 and 40 wouldn't turn.  FOrtunately it was
stuck on Europe.  I used the lower 20/40 on the ring 
rotor at 61' to try to fill in the other  directions,  but
to Asia and the Pacific the lower antenna is quite a 
step down in performance, especially on 40.  To make
things worse, I forgot to park that antenna back to
Europe when finished with 40 to JA on Sunday morning.
A gust of wind caused the ring to sit in a spot that 
I couldn't turn from.  I didn't notice this until late
Sunday afternoon when I went to turn the antenna to work
South and found that the antenna was pointed NW.  Several
trips to the back yard and I had it going again and 
pointing in the desired direction,

Monday I found that the problem with the prop pitch rotor
was a loose wire in a junction box at the  base of the
tower.  My wires and cables to the tower all lie on the 
ground and I have to move them back and forth each week
to mow.  I guess the movement (coupled with yanking to 
get things to lay back in place when finishing mowing)
had pulled out one of the multiple DC  return lines.
The remaining return line was just  barely good enough
to turn things sometimes, but not other times, due to the
time-out feature of the  controller.  

My QSOs were all made with TR4W's DVP feature.  One
fellow broke out laughing, kindly, upon hearing his callsign
generated by the computer. The 293 QSOs made when I was 
calling CQ would not havve been possible without that feature.

History shows that W9RE generally scores 4 times as high
as I do in this contest when conditions are poor (low
sunspot activity) and about 3 times as high when
conditions are good, so I guess I shouldn't be too
disappointed with my score.

I will swap out the troubled Orion for the Omni VI backup
this week for the CW contests, where SO2R is a bigger
factor for low-power folks.


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