[3830] CQWW SSB VE2IM(VE3DZ) SOAB HP

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CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: VE2IM
Operator(s): VE3DZ
Station: VE2CSI

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Zone 2
Operating Time (hrs): 41

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  132     6       11
   80:  434    16       43
   40:  562    16       45
   20: 1430    27      106
   15:  726    25       89
   10:  182    14       35
------------------------------
Total: 3466   104      329  Total Score = 3,496,475

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

The first disappointment when I arrived to the location and started to check
everything was 40 m beam. 
It showed decent SWR at first,  but when I applied a bit of a power it went sky
high and never came back.
Definitely a bad connection somewhere. Spent almost all day on Wednesday
climbing the 65 feet tower at and trying to troubleshoot the failure,  but only
could confirm that the coax was good and the problem cojkd be either with the
driven element itself or the connection point to it. In either case there was
no easy fix - the dtiven element is too far from the tower and in order to
reach one needed a boom truck ("Cherry Picker") or the whole antenna
needed to be taken down. I couldn't reach any of the local guys to get any help
so I decided to put up just a sloping dipole towards EU for the Contest. I did
it on Thursday. Fortunately,  the weather cooperated - it was only -2 C outside
both days with bright sunshine. 
Everything else worked just fine - all other antennas, the radio,  the amp, the
laptop with logger and interface and even the audio recording. 
The second disappointment was,  of course,  the conditions. Honestly,  I can't
recall something like that in my previous 17 years of Zone 2 Contesting. When
conditions like that happen you try to go South,  not North. 
In my case the most affected bands were 40 and 80. Actually,  10 was better
than expected, especially on the 2nd day. 15 was also better on Sunday. But on
40 it looked like someone just turned the Europe off. I could hear some
stations at about S 3-4 level,  but most of them were not reacting to my calls
simply CQ'ing in my face. I couldn't get things going and when the rate was
dropping to the shameful 10-15 Q's per hour I was simply taking a few hours
break on both nights for the nap. 
But I guess almost everybody in the World was affected by these conditions one
way or another (except the ones who were closer to equator, I think) so I
shouldn't complain, though my score this time is not even a half from what can
be done from here. 
It is what it is, and I'm trying to stay positive thinking that my trip might
have helped somebody to work a rare zone. :-)
Thanks again to all who went extra mile and moved to another band for me and
especially to:
- Teddy VP2ETE with whom we made qsos on 4 bands in just 2 minutes! 
- Oliver ZD8W for a 3 band double multiplier in 2 minutes. 
Special thanks go to Igor VE3ZF/VE2IDX who helped me a lot before, during and
after this trip. As usual, local guys VA2RDK, VA2FGG and VA2VVV were very
helpful.
I really appreciate every contact in these difficult conditions. Good luck to
everyone in CW part.


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