[3830] CQWW SSB RU9CZD(N5ZO) SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: RU9CZD
Operator(s): N5ZO
Station: R9DX

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Ekaterinburg
Operating Time (hrs): 47.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   51     5       24
   80:  358    13       49
   40: 1020    22       70
   20: 1336    34       91
   15:  945    28       74
   10:  922    27       79
------------------------------
Total: 4632   129      387  Total Score = 6,650,208

Club: Ural Contest Group

Comments:

Big thanks to Wadim R9DX for allowing me to operate zone 17 from his very well
designed station.  Also thanks to Igor UA9CDC and Oleg UA9CDV and Wadim's wife
Irina for all the logistics support before and during my week+ long stay in
Ekaterinburg area in Russia.  Again, new frienships were made during this trip
which is one of the most important reward of these travels.  Also thanks to my
friend Anatoly RC9O for making initial inquiries around z 17 and making
introductions with Wadim.

I arrived to station late night on Sunday after flying over 13 timezones, and
it was indeed good to get to destination early in order to adjust internal
clock which took me all week and I wasn't really sleeping well for many nights.
 Igor was explaining to me about high oxygen content on air which makes body to
think it needs less sleep.  I'm not sure if I experienced that or just jet lag
or combination, but 1st good night sleep I had on Monday night after the
contest...  But in z 17 contest begins at 6 am local time, so start time was
going to be sort of optimal even if I was still somewhat sleep deprived at
start and I decided to go for full 48 hrs even when I knew that I would be
struggling for few hours on Sunday afternoon.  

There were only few items to adjust and fix during the week leading to contest,
so I had some time to explore propagation also b4 the contest.  As Wadim went to
CT9 to do his SOSB 15 operation one of the PCs travelled with him and
replacement was installed for main radio at the station.  During the week I
found strange PTT hang up problem with it and I thought I had it figured out
and taken care of on Thursday as I did not see it any more, but then of course
it reappeared again 10 hrs into the contest causing my main radio PTT to not
activate after transmission with 2nd radio on certain band combinations.  Cure
was to boot main radio PC which I did several times during the contest and
finally settled to use 2nd radio for transmit very little or on certain bands
only like on low bands where problem seemed to happen less.

Interesting challenge again was to operate 600+ QSOs with Russian stations (and
hundreds of East Europeans too) which all 1st came back to me in Russian
language, and on 2nd repeat usually still in Russian, often on 3rd try too. 
Few of them ran away when I could only reply in English.  This language issue
slowed me down quite a bit all through the contest.  It seemed to improve
towards end when they started to remember me and I think I began to pick up
some Russian phonetics too.  Thank you all for your patience.  It was still
great fun for everyone !

After contest analysis reveals that I may have missed some of the great 10 m
conditions on 2nd day and was instead on 15 and 20 perhaps too much.  There was
other reason for it too, as when I got to 10 m on Sunday there was strange
jamming or radar signal there which made it quite useless above 28550 and it
was WIDE (100s of kHz), LOUD and lasted for hours.  During this QRM I was not
able to use the space on 10 m.  During the week before the contest I saw
similar wide transmission on 20 m too.  

I had great trip to Ekaterinburg and it is always interesting to see how others
are doing things and how stations are built and configured and what kind of
capabilities different stations have.  I had countless antennas on my disposal
and possibility to transmit and receive multiple directions at same time.  Like
I was able to listen on main radio main receiver from West and have South and
East on my right ear with main radio 2nd receiver.  Lot of this advance
capability takes lot of practice to take full advantage, but I saw many
benefits of this when say 3B8 or AH0 called me on my right ear while I was
running Europe.  As I'm building my own small station at home all this gave me
some ideas what I could try to do at home too.  Station had also big yagi
separated from main antennas to be able to do in band SO2R but I decided
already before the contest that it was too much going on already without it. 
All antennas I tried at Wadim's place worked excellent, I'm very impressed and
his station is indeed one of the most advanced single op stations I have seen.

This was my 21st zone to operate CQWW from, so there is 19 more to go.  No new
zone during CW weekend though as I will be back at ZD8O for CW this time.  Tnx
for QSOs on this one and see you all again on CW ! 73 de Marko N5ZO


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