[3830] CQWW CW VE3VN SOAB QRP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: VE3VN
Operator(s): VE3VN
Station: VE3VN

Class: SOAB QRP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    8     3        2
   80:  171    10       35
   40:  259    19       62
   20:  289    25       82
   15:  317    20       81
   10:   67    16       29
------------------------------
Total: 1111    93      291  Total Score = 1,110,144

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

Well, that was an interesting weekend of QRP torture. Many things went well and
many things went badly. Significant score reduction from 2014 due to very
little Europe on 10, and a shorter and narrower opening that way on 15.

The best improvement was due to slightly better antennas on 40 and 80. It's
only a few db but with QRP every decibel is worth gold. Perhaps my biggest
mistake was on 10 meters which I ignored too often because it couldn't deliver
the Q's. I missed many mults on that band.

I'm very unstructured in my approach to single-op contesting, keeping only a
few notes on broad strategy in mind. I just tend to go with what works in the
moment. For example, since there were north Europe and Russian stations coming
through over the pole during their night I made a note to check 20 at intervals
during the night. I scored a few nice mults that way. I still missed a couple
that were S9 but could not hear me. I made a special effort to bulk up on Q's
this outing rather than go too crazy chasing mults, with their pile-ups that I
can rarely bust.

Throughout the day I unavoidably had to take many short breaks, even during hot
band conditions. But I should be back to 100% within a couple of weeks. I went
very casual in SS Phone last weekend when I was in still in poor shape.

Biggest panic was connecting the new WinKeyer to the KX3 a few hours before the
contest. I had made a mental note to buy or build a keying cable for it, but
forgot since it's not the rig I normally use. Fighting the Canadian
"faux" version of Black Friday in late afternoon wasn't fun.

Shack - KX3 (5 watts), N1MM+, WinKeyer
160 (see 80, but with high and uncorrected SWR)
80 - tower vertical with short radials
40 - inverted vees @14m E-W and N-S
20, 15, 10 - Explorer 14 @15m, and the inverted vees

As always, thank you to the countless operators who went to unreasonable
efforts at times to dig me out of the noise to put me in their logs.


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