[3830] WPX SSB VE4VT SOAB LP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: VE4VT
Operator(s): VE4VT
Station: VE4VT

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 35:58
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:   31
   40:  459
   20:  623
   15:  766
   10:  310
------------
Total: 2189  Prefixes = 909  Total Score = 5,611,257

Club: Radiosport Manitoba

Comments:

I don't think I have ever been so exhausted after a contest as I am this time.
The plan was to go hard as I had cleared the weekend of any other obligations.

The plan was to run SO2R and low power. I had been having problems with a relay
in my tower top switch that affected my 20/15/10 beam whenever it got cold.
Friday night the beam was working and I had 90minutes of a good run on 15m to
start the contest. In fact I took my first break at 7:30 and had managed to
average nearly 100Q per hr for the first night. Being low power, I focused on
running stateside on 40m instead of trying to compete for the EU/SA DX. I
figured 4 pointers and a good rate are better than 6 pointers at a much slower
rate.

Saturday was not a good day. It was much colder now and of course the relay was
not working. I decided that I had to climb the tower to do something about it so
off I went with the climbing gear with a 60km wind blowing and -5 temps. I
managed to bypass the switch but that meant my 40m beam was now unavailable and
I would have to rely on the ground mounted vertical for the second night.

20 and 15 took a long time to open. Signals were strong but I could not be
heard easily. The bands just died all of a sudden around noon Saturday.
Complete silence...very eery.

10m did not open until very late in the afternoon and I finally heard some big
EU multis on 10m but the path was skewed nearly 90 degrees and they were not
workable with 100W. 

Very slow rates all day Saturday. trying to find a frequency to run was tough
enough, keeping it with 100W was impossible. I dont know how many times I found
what I thought was a useable frequency only to discover there was another
undetectable stateside station using it. Similarly I would be running and
someone  would start running on the same frequency. What can you do...

Sunday the bands were much better. Actually managed to have a few decent runs
before loosing the frequency war. You point the beam stateside and the EU
stations move in to QRM you and you point towards EU and the stateside stations
move in. You can't win.
10m actually opened to EU as it should. Sometimes the rate was better
S&Ping than trying to run. So spent a lot of time spinning the dial. The
new firmware for the icom 7700 allows you to a mouse to point at a frequency on
the spectrum display and QSY directly there. A great feature for moving to the
best signals while scanning the band. 

Now if we can somehow assign score reductions for bad audio quality. With all
the SDR recordings, it would take  some doing but a sample of each station
could be reviewed and assign a quality factor. Deductions for distorted or
excessive bandwidths could be assigned. I am sure the excessive bandwidth is
deliberate and just used to provide a guardband against others encroaching.

Have your ears stopped ringing yet?  See you next time!

Ed


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