[3830] CQWW CW K1LT SO(A)AB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: K1LT
Operator(s): K1LT
Station: K1LT

Class: SO(A)AB HP
QTH: Ohio EM89ps
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  168    18       74
   80:  198    22       84
   40:  352    32      107
   20:  506    30      110
   15:  263    22       85
   10:                    
------------------------------
Total: 1487   124      460  Total Score = 2,442,872

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

I had no particular goals in mind for the CW session of the 2018 CQ
Worldwide DX Contest other than to contact as many different grid
squares as possible.  The best strategy would be 'work everybody on
every band' but I'm lazy.  So I settled for the point-and-pounce
assisted class and tried to work every yellow call on my band map or
dismiss the broken spots.

For the past few years I have allocated the week including the
Thanksgiving holidays before contesting's biggest contest to projects
that make my station more competitive.  However, the last couple of
years the projects have become somewhat more long term such as the
perpetual beam steering antenna receiver project that needs a clever
name.  This year, work intervened and I could work on projects only on
Thursday and Friday.

Thursday I spent the day implementing the beam steering algorithm in
so-called 'high level synthesis' style C++ code.  Then the HLS tool
translates the pseudo-C++ code into FPGA code which executes in
hardware.  Once I complete the user interface part of the project
(regular C++ software) and finish the additional receiver boards and
short antennas, I can actually try the new phased array antenna /
receiver on the air.  This project is probably about 80% complete.

Friday I thought I would be clever and check out the functionality of
my station before the contest.  One of the issues I noticed during
Sweepstakes CW was that the amplifier would sometimes make an arcing
noise on 80 meters even though nothing appears to be wrong.  The SWR
on 80 is a bit high at 2:1 but the red LEDs do not come on.  So I
fired up the amplifier to see if it still had a problem.  Initially it
worked fine, but after a while, an arc noise occurred.  So I pulled of
the cover and looked around.  No carbon traces and no smells.  So I
defeated both interlocks and stood back while it performed the
3-minute slow dance.  With the cover off, no arcing occurred.  There
was some dust here and there so I dragged the compressed air hose in
from the garage and blew out the dust.  Great clouds of fine brown
mist emerged from various places.  After that, no more arcing.

Another issue I have noticed for several months is that something in
the amplifier monitoring circuitry no longer works.  The symptoms are:
no 'efficiency' reading on the 3rd LED bar graph except on 15 and 10
meters and no fault protection on over-drive.  I haven't investigated
this problem yet and I have been lucky that accidentally overdriving
the amplifier hasn't blown up something.  Both symptoms seem to
indicate that the monitor stuff can't see the watt meter signal.  Note
that previously the built-in watt meter failed but that was repaired.

Last week for some reason a powerful urge overcame me and I ordered a
K3S and P3 from Elecraft.  UPS promised all week to deliver the K3 on
the Monday after the contest which seemed like a good thing from the
distraction perspective.  However, the UPS truck pulled into my
driveway while I was tweaking my 80-meter vertical with just enough
time left before the contest to build it.

Since there were about 5 hours until the contest started and the
previous K3 took about 4 hours to build and calibrate, I figured I
might make a stab at building it.  When finished, I could then decide
if ripping my station apart to plug in a different radio was worth the
disruption.  I built the P3 first since that is quick and I could
immediately add the P3 to the second 10-watt K3.

By an hour before the contest, I had the P3 installed and running and
the K3S partly assembled.  Apparently, my eyesight (or brain or
something) has deteriorated enough over the last 10 years that I am
much slower.  So I sadly set the unfinished radio aside, ate dinner,
and sat down to operate.  Oh the terrible burden of too many toys.

I heard nothing on 15 meters.  20 meters was already mostly closed.
40 meters seemed to be in that state where Europe is very loud here
but they can't hear us.  Finally, 80 and 160 meters both sounded like
what 20 used to sound like.  So I alternated 80 and 160 until 0800Z.
Conditions on 80 and 160 were the best I have ever heard.  Noise was
very low, no static and no buzz, and signals were very strong.  Nearly
every common European multiplier was available on both 80 and 160 and
the Caribbean stations were also available.  I accumulated enough
multipliers on 80 to consider making 100 multipliers the goal for the
weekend.  But I became so sleepy that I scheduled a 3-hour snooze.

At 1130Z I returned to the 80 and 40 meter rotation and worked a few
more multipliers.  I didn't see any yellow on the 160 band map so I
didn't go there.  At 1230Z I moved up to 20 meters and started clicking
through the band map.  After a while I decided that the mousing was
too tedious and waiting for a QSO to complete was too boring so I
started running.

30 minutes and 90 QSOs later I moved to 15 meters to escape the
maddening crowds figuring that 15 would be slow and I could return to
20.  Well 15 was not too slow.  The opening to western and southern
Europe was better than expected although I worked all of the available
multipliers in less than 2 hours.

The morning rush seemed to run down quickly.  I alternated between 20
and 15 for several hours chasing multipliers when possible and running
when bored.  Around 1930Z I tried 40 and worked a few Europeans there.
Then I alternated between 20 and 40 until JAs on 20 started being
plentiful around 2200Z.  While running JAs I finally started using the
SO2R stuff to call stations on 40.

When I tried to work 40 while running on 20, I discovered a limitation
of my automated antenna switching.  I use a transfer relay to swap the
K3 sub-receiver input between the Beverages and the low tribander.
The antenna input to the K3 sub-receiver is preceded by a splitter
than sends half the signal to the second K3 main receiver input.  Thus
the K3 sub receiver and the 2nd K3 main receiver have to agree to use
the same antenna.  A better arrangement would be to move the splitter
upstream from the transfer relay so that the 2nd K3's choice of RX
antenna could be independent.  An even better arrangement would be to
put splitters on both Beverage feeds and additional switching so that
each receiver can select any combination of available RX antennas.  So
I just received on the 40 meter transmit antenna which somewhat
limited my choice of stations to call on the 2nd radio.

The second night conditions were not as good.  Static was initially
very bad although it got better through the evening.  Signals were
almost as loud on 80 and 160 seemed to be even better than the night
before.  I even had a run of about 25 Europeans in 30 minutes on 160
around 0600Z.  Eventually the rates declined enough to make me very
sleepy and I snoozed for 4 hours around 0730Z, made one contact on 40
at 1200Z and snoozed for another 90 minutes.

Sunday morning was a repeat of Saturday morning except that 15 was
much weaker and I ran more to compensate for the fewer new
multipliers.  By Sunday afternoon I figured out how to use my SO2R
setup to run on 15 while pouncing on 20.  This configuration never
worked before because I had a switching error that I fixed a couple of
3830 posts ago.

Sunday evening the JA run did not materialize but a nice run on 40
starting at 2100Z produced 120 QSOs in an hour.  After that the
contest was quite slow until the finish.

Surprise multipliers: I heard RI1ANL working someone on 15 Saturday.
I moved up the band slightly and called CQ.  He soon answered.  Even
though the strategy was to snag that multiplier, it is always very
pleasing when it works.  7Q7M answered my CQ on 40 meters early
Saturday evening.  KL2R answered my CQ on 40 meters at 5 pm Sunday
afternoon local time.

DX worked: 4L, 4X, *4U/v, 5B, 5H, 5W, 5Z, 6W, 6Y, 7Q, 8P, 9A, 9H, 9L,
9X, 9Y, A4, C6, CE, CE9, CM, CN, CP, CT, CT3, CU, CX, D4, DL, E7, EA,
EA6, EA8, EA9, EI, ER, ES, EU, F, FG, FM, FY, G, GD, GI, GM, GU, GW,
HA, HB, HB0, HC, HH, HI, HK, HP, HR, I, *IG9, *IT9, J3, J6, J8, JA,
JD/o, K, KH2, KH6, KL, KP2, KP4, LA, LU, LX, LY, LZ, OA, OE, OH, OH0,
OK, OM, ON, OX, OZ, P4, PA, PJ2, PJ4, PJ7, PY, PY0F, PZ, S5, SM, SP,
SV, TA, TF, TI, TK, TR, UA, UA2, UA9, UN, UR, V2, V4, V5, V6, VE, VK,
VP2E, VP2V, VP5, VP8/h, VP9, XE, YL, YO, YU, YV, Z3, ZF, ZL, and ZS
for a total of 127 CQ WW entites or 124 DXCC entities.

Equipment: K3/100, P3, Alpha 8410; K3/10, Hardrock-50, ETO 91B
(thanks, Jeff); high bands: X7 at 101 feet and X7 at 61 feet; low
bands: full sized 40 vertical over 32 radials, full sized 80 vertical
over 60 radials, 65-160 'tee' over 75 radials.  Homebrew SO2R and
audio routing stuff.  Homebrew W3NQN filters for 20 and 40.  Not so
ancient Writelog 12 (they had a sale).


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