[3830] CQ WW RTTY W6QU(W8QZA) SOAB QRP

webform at b4h.net webform at b4h.net
Mon Sep 30 15:04:17 EDT 2013


                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: W6QU
Operator(s): W8QZA
Station: W8QZA

Class: SOAB QRP
QTH: San Diego, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 33.7

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  State/Prov  DX   Zones
------------------------------------
   80:    8        6       2     2
   40:   53       19       8     9
   20:   62       16      20    18
   15:  300       35      62    26
   10:  117       24      32    18
------------------------------------
Total:  540      100     124    73  Total Score = 348,381

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Comments:

Rig: Yaesu FT-817

Antennas:

10-15-20  3 el SteppIR up 32 feet
40        DX-LB trap dipole up 32 feet
40-80     Butternut HF-2V Vertical
--------------------------------------

I am delighted to finally take part in the major RTTY contests now that they
have started a QRP category!

Conditions were decent, but not great.  A measure of how good conditions were
is the percent of my QSOs into Europe, which is a long haul for 5 watts from
out here on the west coast! 30% of my Qs were into Europe, and almost all were
on 15 Meters. I did work 12 Europeans on 10 Meters, but I never got the great
10 M opening I expect to get later in the season.

I slept 4 hours each night which worked out better than trying to get by on 2
or 3 hours. I actually ended up with a few more hours of op time (according to
N1MM) because I was able to stay at the rig when I was awake.

I did not have any amazing QSOs, but several notable ones. On 10 M I got a VK6
(always nice in a contest that counts zones!) and an FO.  On 15 M I got 9M6,
5W, 5B, VR, BV, and GJ. On 20 M an OH0 and UN. Nothing surprising on 40 or 80.

My DXCC for the contest was 71 countries and WAZ was 28.

I actually tried CQing at the last hour of the contest. It seemed it might be
quite difficult to get the hang of, but I studied the macro keys, and went way
up the band on 10 M and it actually worked out pretty well. I got about 7
USA/VE stations over 20 minutes or so and then tried CQing toward JA in the
last 5 minutes and got 2 more JAs. A third called, but was off frequency. I
will get the RIT operational next time!!

I had one funny glitch happen that cost me about 20 minutes. Suddenly my Astron
power supply went dead. This had just happened a month ago to another old Astron
so I wasn't too surprised. After all, I had bought this one in a swap meet. I
started trouble shooting and at one point I actually tried using a 1.5 amp
"wall wart". After all, this is QRP! But even at QRP the voltage
dropped a couple of volts when I keyed the rig. Suddenly I saw that the light
on the power strip was off. I had accidently kicked the switch off with my foot
as I was stretching during a pause in the activity. ....That was certainly a
first!!

So now that there is a QRP category in CQ WWDX RTTY, contest season starts a
month earlier. It doesn't get any better than that!

73,  Bill Parker  W8QZA / W6QU


Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/


More information about the 3830 mailing list