[3830] CQWW CW NP4DX(VE3DZ) SOAB HP

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CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: NP4DX
Operator(s): VE3DZ
Station: WP3C

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Utuado
Operating Time (hrs): 41.6
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  341    13       53
   80:  932    23       88
   40: 1782    29       92
   20: 2194    28       91
   15: 1303    25       82
   10:  196    16       24
------------------------------
Total: 6748   134      430  Total Score = 9,478,020

Club: Contest Club Ontario

Comments:

*score is subject to adjustment (didn't use latest country file).

First of all, I'd like to thank Alfredo, WP3C and his family for giving me the
opportunity to operate Alfredo's station and especially his father (also
Alfredo) for taking good care of me during my stay there.
Unfortunately, what was supposed to be a serious effort has been spoiled by
Murphy's who arranged a 4-hour power outage which, of course, left no hope for
the decent score...
Initially I intended to return to my Zone 2 location to operate in this Contest
as VE2IM, but the conditions in SSB leg were so awful, and the 40 m Beam still
wasn't working, so when Alfredo offered me his station, I had no problem of
changing almost-winter WX in Northern Quebec for warm  Caribbean climate. :-)
And there was still more than 2 weeks left for me to do all the preparation.
Since Alfredo wanted me to use his radios and the existing amp (AL82) all I had
to do is to make a control cable for the Dentron Clipperton amplifier which I
was going to bring with me for the use with the second radio and make a cable
for audio recording. To record my operation I decided to use a RigExpert USB
interface which has built-in sound card and would allow me to record audio in
stereo (2 radios) mode on my own (separate) laptop.
Before the trip I downloaded and studied both FT3000 and FT1200 manuals. I
found out that FT1200 doesn't have a separate TX GND jack for amp control and I
would have to use either a LINEAR jack (which was already occupied by band
decoder or the TUNER jack, which �" according to the diagram - had the
same TX GND output as LINEAR). So, I made a control cable which would take a
+13.8 V from the radio and would engage external 12 VDC relay which, in its
turn, would control the older type Dentron amp (in order not to damage the
transistor in radio's TX GND circuit).
I was so sure that I made everything right that I didn't even selfishly take a
spare pre-wired cable for YAESU radio and RigExpert interface.
When I arrived to the station on Tuesday left at night and made few contacts on
40 meters just barefoot, I was pleasantly surprised of the enormous pile-up. The
2 el. 40 m beam really worked and for the moment I was thinking that maybe it
would be great to do a Low Power operation from here, but then I quickly forgot
about that idea because it was so tempting for me to try to compete in the same
category with other NA guys like ZF2MJ, 8P5A, V47T and TI5W...
When I started to connect all the things I discovered a real problem where I
didn't really expect it �" there was no TX GND signal coming out of the
FT1200 radio. I don't know why, maybe it was damaged earlier, but whatever I
tried - I just couldn't get any ground for the +13.8 VDC on transmit... Neither
from LINEAR nor from TUNER jacks... In addition to that I discovered that both
computers would send crappy CW in N1MM+ Logger because prolific USB-to-COM port
adapters were used on that computer. I spent all Wednesday trying to solve these
problems, and I ended up using my RigExpert interface for CW keying on the first
computer �" thanks to Alfredo who gave me all the directions for where to
find tools, soldering iron and materials (did I mention that he was not
presented at the location at that time and we communicated by SMS because
Internet wasn't working either?).
On the 2nd computer (XP) CW was a bit better, so I just adjusted speed and
ratio in N1MM+ the best I could and had to live with that (it was still not
perfect as compared to the first PC with FTDI-based interface).
As for the 2nd amplifier control I ended up using a foot switch (please don't
laugh) which Papo KP4TG brought on Friday, when he came to replace a rotor
control cable on the 2nd tower. Again, thanks to Alfredo for arranging
everything using his cellphone while being few thousand miles away...
Needless to say that many times I used to forget to push that foot switch when
transmitting which woulld make me running just about 50 watts on the 2nd radio
and I only could realize that when the pile-up would suddenly fade. :-)
On Thursday I was setting up the audio recording. It became not an easy task
since I already used my RigExpert interface on the radio's PC therefore I had
to install audio recording software on the same PC, but without internet I
couldn't even download it, so I used my cell phone as USB stick. :-) Finally,
when I got to the actual connections, I found out the despite FT1200 manual
says there should be a 3.5 mm stereo jack for audio output on the rear panel,
in reality there was an RCA jack. So, had to modify that too, :-)
To make a long story short, I started a contest pretty well, doing few hours at
a  200...250/hr. and made first 1K of QSO in less than 5 hours. Pile-ups were
pretty good on low bands and I even had a good run on 160. I didn't take any
breaks the first night though I was a bit tired from all the things that I had
to fix prior to the contest and (as usual) didn't have enough sleep on Thursday
night. I had already about 2950 QSO's by 1600 Z on Saturday and I felt pretty
excited about my score when suddenly everything went down. At first I didn't
really understand what happened and for the moment I thought that maybe I
overloaded the circuit breaker by using 2 amps. I immediately called Alfredo's
father and we were trying to find out what happened for good half of an hour
until finally we realized that the whole neighborhood is affected and the power
company is trying to restore the service (it was really bad weather on Saturday
and it was continuously raining all day).
Unfortunately, I was completely unprepared for this scenario and didn't even
arrange a backup generator before the Contest.
Anyway, I quickly realized that my hope for decent score went down the drain
and I was seriously thinking about quitting, however, 4 hours later when the
power was restored I decided to make the best out of it and carried on. 
Of course, the motivation was lost which led to me taking a 2-hour nap break
(supposed to be just an hour) on the 2nd night.
Anyway, despite the bad luck, I really had a lot of fun and definitely it was
the right decision for me to switch from Zone 2... I feel that this station and
location have a great potential.
Congrats to ZF2MJ, 8P5A, V47T and TI5W on great scores! I'll try to catch up
next year. :-) 
Besides the hosts, my sincere thanks go to those who went extra mile and went
to another band on my request. And thanks to all for the QSOs!
See you all in the ARRL DX CW in February.

Thanks for reading.


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