[3830] CQWW CW C92ZO(N5ZO) SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: C92ZO
Operator(s): N5ZO
Station: C92ZO

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Mozambique
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    6     4        6
   80:  160    12       41
   40:  497    26       71
   20: 1059    32       99
   15: 1375    31       95
   10: 1808    32      103
------------------------------
Total: 4905   137      415  Total Score = 8,059,752

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Comments:

This small report is somewhat late as I fell ill with fever just after returning
back to Sao Paulo from Mozambique.  (I'm staying in SP for some weeks after the
contest before returning to California.)  I managed to get log sent on time but
wasn't feeling like doing anything for next several days while rollercoasting
with fever.

Daniel ZS6JR and Jose ZS6AGS did excellent job on setting up station and
providing all logistical support for this operation.  They drove 15 hrs from 
Johannesburg with all gear including tower trailer on tow and were stopped and
harrashed by Moz police looking for bribes number of times during the trip to 
operating site owned by Jose and located 300+ km North of Maputo in C92 call
area.  This was complete field day style operation and Daniel had already set
up most of the antennas b4 my arrival to Maputo on Sunday and guys actually
drove back down to Maputo to get me from airport, ie it was 600 km of more
driving with Moz roads  that day.  Of course my luggage with some essential
pieces like computer keying interface etc. was delayed, but at least it came on
next flight form Jburg and wasn't lost...  While waiting luggage Daniel and I
got guided tour of Maputo by Jose.  Jose cooks hearty breakfast and Daniel and
I were well fed during our stay in Moz.

Operating site was excellent on shores of salty lake/lagoon towards North
direction.  All antennas were within 100 ft from waters edge:
160/80: 80 m full size vertical with loading coil for 160, around 20 radials
40: 4 square with one elevated radial on each vertical
20/15/10: A4S tribander about 50 ft high

Radio: SO1R operation with simple K-3 (no subreceiver)
Amp: Alpha 78, 1000 W out
N1MM+

Site was rural enough so there really wasn't much man made noise around.  Also,
power installations were rather recent, something like 15 years old, so there 
wasn't any notable power line noise either.  Of course power was still somewhat
unreliable and actually went off exactly 2 minutes before the start of the 
contest 2 am local time.  Usually it always came back in few minutes, and I was
actually logging my 1st QSO 0008z.  I had several of these brief power 
outages during the contest but I took them as opportunity to get up and move
around etc.  There was one longer problem when mains voltage plunged to 150 
volts or so and stayed that way for an hour or 2.  My tranceiver and 2
computers were all in switching power supplies so I was able to stay on air
barefoot even with that voltage and somewhat later Jose actually started
generator for that period of time and after half an hour I was running Alpha
from generator power.  After couple hrs problem went away and mains voltage was
back to more normal 200+ volts.  I was also lucky not to get any big
thunderstorms during the contest.  We had one big storm going by during the
week b4 the contest which caused longer power outages that night.

During the week b4 the contest I made about 3400 Qs, all on CW to get somewhat
familiar with propagation and to do some code practice.  Contest conditions
were pretty good on 1st day on high bands and on 2nd day on low bands.  I had
excellent LP on 20 m to JA on 1st night and logged 400+ JAs.  There was
something going on all times and I did not take any sleeping breaks.  I was
actually somewhat surprised how good it was from that far South, even 40 and 80
felt better than multiple times I have operated from ZD8.  Maybe that was due to
QTH near the water and also better antennas on those bands than what I've been
able to set up at ZD8 QTH.  Score is actually my 2nd best ever SOAB CW score. 
It was great to me double mult for most in the contest, but pile-ups were not
easy from such rare place.

Couple observations:  Constant calling is just completely out of control.  Many
times I noticed that stations could not hear me as my signal was covered by 
these constant callers.  I often proceeded to work split, which helped although
some callers have no clue what is going on and portion of them would still 
continue calling on my TX freq.  Most of the guys who get it and QSY UP, they
will go exactly 1 kHz UP and then pile-up is zero beat exactly 1 kHz UP with 
few exceptions.  And those few exceptions actually get into log fastest... 
Skimmers etc really make it challenging to be in rare place these days.  Couple

times on Sunday I just left and started over on new frequency as with all
fatigue etc it was just too difficult to work these zero beaters.

This was my 2nd CQ WW that ended up in emergency room.  Looks like I got bit by
some serious insect above the anckle on my right foot towards the end of the 
trip to Moz.  Actually it looked more like snake bite but I'm sure snake did
not bite me...  Anyway, after returning to Sao Paulo I developed high fever and

did 2 visits to local hospital ER, 1st to check that I did not have malaria and
later I went back there again as fever continued for multiple days.  After 
about week of fever I finally got rid of it and doctors concluded that most
likely the source of the fever was indeed that bite on leg, perhaps spider
venom
or something like that.  But all blood and other tests they did for me at ER
came back OK, so looks like all is clear now. 

I made a note around mid-point of the contest that my 24 hrs Classic score is
around 3.3M.  I have now operated CQWW from 23 different zones.


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