[3830] IARU WX0B(AD5Q) SOABCW HP

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IARU HF World Championship

Call: WX0B
Operator(s): AD5Q
Station: WX0B

Class: SOABCW HP
QTH: Dallas
Operating Time (hrs): 22
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Zones  HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
  160:    40    0       8        3
   80:   175    0      16       19
   40:   601    0      28       32
   20:   634    0      31       40
   15:   300    0      18       14
   10:    37    0       5        1
-------------------------------------
Total:  1782    0     106      109  Total Score = 1,233,670

Club: DFW Contest Group

Comments:

Got off to a good start, and after 6 hours the score was about 50% higher than
at the same point last year. Then the bands got noisy and the rate tanked. It
wasn't a big storm system, but it was northeast and nearby. So there was about
3-1/2 hours of low rate in the afternoon, including 2 hours of actual down time
with the cables pulled. When the cells moved south I was able to run again.

What I look forward to in this contest is the opportunity to experiment with
interleaving Qso's on 2 run bands. The technique has major limitations which I
learned about last year. Both runs need to be easy copy (with mostly short
prefilled exchanges) where few contacts need callsign fills. This means that
the big EU runs in CQWW aren't the best place to practice and that the
stateside runs in this contest most certainly are. The automation is scripted,
and I need to do my coding and testing on-site. I intended to implement new
changes prior to this contest which would manage situations where its necessary
to pause both runs in order to get fills in one or both of them. I arrived to
find the shack PC dead and needing compatible parts (found on Craigslist), so
the programming changes didn't go in until after the contest (and sleep).

I tried some Dueling ESM anyway, beginning with a run on 10 while already
running on 15. Different CW messages are used which aren't the static ones
configured in the software. They were still hard coded from the ARRL CW, and
after 19 Q's somebody let me know that I was sending "TX" in my
exchange instead of my zone (tnx, W9RE). At this time I also noticed that the
rig on 15 wasn't transmitting at all. I was expecting this problem since we
hadn't isolated and fixed it after the ARRL CW. Something overheats, so no SO2R
until it cools off. 2 hours later I was interleaving runs on 15 & 20 with
rates peaking well over 200 (300+ once). This made my day, overshadowing any
other problems. I'm hooked on interleaving.

As in the ARRL CW, the run rig continued to fail on transmit and we have a
handle on the problem. I was SO1R for most of the night and for over half the
contest overall. Looking forward to next year.

Roy -- AD5Q


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