[3830] IARU WC1M SOABCW HP
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Sun Jul 12 15:12:01 EDT 2015
IARU HF World Championship
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M
Class: SOABCW HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 22.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 15 4 3
80: 87 10 17
40: 694 25 35
20: 981 32 41
15: 185 19 32
10: 7 2 4
-------------------------------------
Total: 1969 0 92 132 Total Score = 1,779,232
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
7943 QSO points (see discussion below.)
It’s been four years since I’ve had the pleasure of operating in the IARU
contest �" test runs for WRTC 2014 and the final event kept a number of
us busy during the contest in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Glad to be back!
Congrats to W1KM for a fine job. It’s early, so there could be other high CW
scores out there (e.g., haven’t seen posts from N2NT and K1RX yet), so
congrats in advance if so. You never know who will show up in the CW-only
category. Sometimes you hear a competitive station all over the CW bands but it
winds up in the Mixed category.
Also congrats to K1ZD (K1ZZ), who may be one place behind me right now but the
margin between our scores is so razor thin that I’m sure Dave will cruise
past me after log checking. He’s definitely more accurate than I am. Also, I
have doubts about Qs where I could swear the station sent different zones on
different bands. Even had one where the call was definitely an HQ station I had
worked on other bands but the op kept sending the zone! There’s always that
question of what to log when these things happen �" what you heard or
what you think is right. All part of the fun.
Conditions were pretty tough �" the K index started at 4 and was
predicted to hit 6. I don’t think that happened, but the A index did hit 25.
The low flux and disturbed conditions kept 10 from opening, so I was only able
to grab a handful of mults there. 160 was mostly dead. I managed to grab a few
mults early in the evening, but that was it.
Nevertheless, rate was pretty high most of the time. Had I not taken a
half-hour break at 2300z, I would have had seven hours of sustained 100+ rate,
mostly on 40. The only time rate really dropped off was around 0700z-0800z.
Copy through the atmospheric noise was challenging around that time. My
diversity reception setup on 40 helped a lot but it was still tough sledding.
Oddly enough, I was able to work a fair number of Asiatic Russians, but I only
heard (and worked) one JA -- right at the start of the contest. No deep Asia at
all, so over-the-pole must have been compromised in that direction. East-West
transequatorial propagation was OK, with plenty of VKs, ZLs, Oceania and a few
African stations as well.
Speaking of breaks, the 1.5 hours of off-time shown in my log doesn’t quite
tell the story. I think it was more like 2 hours, probably more. Writelog only
counts the break if it’s at least a half-hour. I spent way too much time away
from the radio on short breaks in this contest, a problem that plagues me more
and more as the years go by. It’s especially bad in the first few hours in
the contest, when my mind and body really want to be somewhere else. Usually by
the second half of the contest I settle in and stay in the chair more. Gotta
work on that.
I don’t think the extra Qs would have pushed me higher in the ranks because
my mults are pretty low. It looks like a lot of that was due to not spending
enough time on 80. 40 had higher rate and my antennas on 80 aren’t very good.
I also came up short on zones on 15, which may be due to the poor conditions
having more impact on the high bands at higher latitudes. N1UR and I have seen
that phenomenon on 15 a number of times. Seems like even 50-100 miles further
south the rates are always higher on 15 ad 10 when conditions are poor.
What’s interesting is that my QSO points are the highest posted so far for
SOABHP CW. That puzzles me because, while I always run EU, EU, EU in every DX
contest, I thought I had worked a lot of USA stations this time. I even turned
my beams west a few times, albeit later in the contest. I certainly worked a
lot of USA off the back of the beams. And it seems to me that most of the other
ops with high scores must have been running EU as much as I did. Once again,
this may be because I had more Qs on 40 versus 80 than others in my category.
40 would probably yield a higher percentage of EU, while 80 would yield more
USA. Not sure if that's enough to explain the difference, though. It would be
interesting to compare continent breakdowns with others in the category.
The big task prior to this contest was rebuilding my entire antenna switching
system. As I reported in WPX, my relay controller failed prior to that contest,
most likely from a lightning surge. I fixed it (SMD soldering is *so* much fun)
and built a spare (and one for another station.) During testing I found that my
oldest SO2R relay matrix wasn’t switching properly, so I rebuilt that and
another matrix using newer high-isolation boards. It was a lot of work, but
everything seems to be switching correctly now.
Also had to fix the bi-directional beverage �" a tree had fallen on it,
so I had to get the chainsaw out. One of the leads had pulled off the ground,
too. Antenna maintenance never ends, but I consider myself lucky that there
wasn’t more to do for this contest.
All in all, it was lots of fun. See you in the next one!
73, Dick WC1M
Antennas:
160M - trapped vee @90'
80M - delta loop @75, trapped vee @90'
40M - Cal-Av 2D-40A @110', 4-square
20M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 4-el @72'
15M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 5-el @50'
10M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50'. 6-el @115'
Tower#1: Force 12 EF-610, Cal-AV 2D-40A, 4-el SteppIRs, 160/80 trapped vee
770-MDP: Force-12 EF-420
AB-577 #1: Force-12 EF-515 (only turns between 330-90 degrees due to a large
branch that’s grown)
AB-577 #2: Force-12 C3E
Delta loop hung from a tree
dual 580' beverage aimed 20/220 degrees
Equipment:
Elecraft K3 + Alpha 87A, Elecraft K3 + LP-PAN + Acom 2000A, Writelog,
LP-BRIDGE, PowerSDR-IF, YCCC SO2R Box, homebrew Windows antenna
switching/tuning software ("AntennaMaster"), iPad running TwoMon USB
for touch-screen "button box", K1XM MOAS II USB Switch (Hamation
relay drivers in this contest), TopTen and KK1L SO2R switches, Green Heron and
Hy-Gain rotor controllers, microHam Stack Switch and Stackmatch
QSO/ZN+HQ by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm Off
D1-1200Z - - - 85/17 15/10 - 100/27 100/27
D1-1300Z - - - 119/8 4/3 - 123/11 223/38
D1-1400Z - - - 70/2 12/11 - 82/13 305/51
D1-1500Z - - - 46/8 33/9 - 79/17 384/68
D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 8/8 79/6 --+-- 87/14 471/82
D1-1700Z - - - - - 5/5 5/5 476/87 53
D1-1800Z - - - 52/1 6/6 2/1 60/8 536/95
D1-1900Z - - - 86/1 8/3 - 94/4 630/99
D1-2000Z - - - 35/8 22/2 - 57/10 687/109
D1-2100Z - - - 113/3 2/1 - 115/4 802/113
D1-2200Z - - 8/8 102/0 - - 110/8 912/121
D1-2300Z - - 31/16 23/1 - - 54/17 966/138 32
D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- 123/9 2/2 --+-- --+-- 125/11 1091/149
D2-0100Z - 10/10 137/4 - - - 147/14 1238/163
D2-0200Z 6/6 10/7 93/1 - - - 109/14 1347/177
D2-0300Z - 3/3 109/2 3/3 - - 115/8 1462/185
D2-0400Z - 16/3 41/2 3/2 - - 60/7 1522/192
D2-0500Z - 32/1 36/9 3/2 - - 71/12 1593/204
D2-0600Z 1/1 - 56/2 3/1 - - 60/4 1653/208
D2-0700Z 4/0 8/2 28/5 3/2 - - 43/9 1696/217
D2-0800Z 4/0 8/1 27/1 1/0 --+-- --+-- 40/2 1736/219
D2-0900Z - - 2/1 66/1 - - 68/2 1804/221
D2-1000Z - - - 95/2 - - 95/2 1899/223
D2-1100Z - - 3/0 63/1 4/0 - 70/1 1969/224
Total: 15/7 87/27 694/60 981/73 185/51 7/6
160M CW 80M CW 40M CW 20M CW 15M CW 10M CW Total %
NA 12 65 301 245 71 0 694 35.2
SA 0 1 11 13 12 6 43 2.2
AS 0 1 7 19 2 0 29 1.5
EU 3 18 359 690 96 0 1166 59.2
AF 0 0 1 7 3 1 12 0.6
OC 0 2 15 5 1 0 23 1.2
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