[3830] CQWW CW ZR2A SO(A)AB LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: ZR2A
Operator(s): ZR2A
Station: ZR2A

Class: SO(A)AB LP
QTH: KF26
Operating Time (hrs): 43

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:   10     6        8
   40:  247    22       52
   20: 1138    31      108
   15:  664    23       98
   10:    4     3        4
------------------------------
Total: 2063    85      270  Total Score = 2,146,685

Club: Bavarian Contest Club

Comments:

My new callsign ZR2A was put on the air for a first contest activity on a
weekend full of contrast between frustration and delight.

I enjoyed great hospitality by Andrew, ZS2PA and his XYL and I am grateful that
I could operate his station consisting of a homebrew C3S tribander @ 14m and a
40m dipole (inv-V). He also installed an 80m dipole for the contest on a
separate portable 15m mast as an inverted-V and prepared a logging computer with
N1MM and properly connected it to the radio which worked fine through the entire
contest. 

Andrew’s little IC-7300 turned out to be a very nice radio and easy to
operate. He seemed a bit surprised about the intensity of the radio’s use in
the contest but the internal status monitor showed that the rig stayed pretty
cool.

I had decided to go for Low Power because Andrew’s 50 year old FLDX-2000 still
with the first set of tubes would probably not have withstood the heat of the
contest, in particular when a tired operator forgets to tune it properly after a
band change. Also, it could only have been used on 20/15/10 due to TVI and other
interference to equipment in the house on the Low Bands. As I was struggling
with RX noise levels on most bands, I would have had more stations that I could
not have copied if I had had a stronger signal. QRN from electrical equipment in
the vicinity was S9 across 80m, S5 on 40, S3 on 10 and around S2 on 20m, all
measured at 500Hz without preamp. I had no antenna for 160m and it probably
would not have made sense with the QRN anyway..

This was my first contest from the Southern hemisphere, so I decided to go for
the Assisted category to better understand what was going on around me. I did
not have clear goals and my expectations ranged from beating the ZS record in
SOAB(A) at 500k to attacking the best ZS SOAB score at 2.3M set up 11 years ago
by ZS6AA.

In the end, I jacked up ZS2I’s SOAB Assisted record by a factor of 4 but fell
short of the best ZS unassisted result due to my crippled listening abilities on
40 and especially 80. Sunday afternoon brought a new ‘highest QSO rate’ for
Low Power in ZS at 150QSO/h. I also enjoyed my first short South African Braai
(local version of barbecue) on Saturday afternoon with my hosts.

Aside from the QRN problems, another challenge was the unusual callsign ZR2A
which threw many operators off. ZR has had the same privileges as ZS since 2016
but there are very few ZR operators active on HF. When I knew that I was going
to be in the contest, I sent an email to K6TU for inclusion in the Master.scp
but the November deadline had already passed. So, it became an interesting
experience to see who would copy what they heard and who would question their
listening skills. Running was no problem but S&P would result in less than
50% of QSO partners copying the call correctly on the first attempt.

And then, there was the effect of being out of the main communication path with
few stations hearing me or coming back to my CQ calls when the band was open
between NA and EU or AS. I was monitoring the Skimmer network in the hope that I
would get spotted and when I was, I enjoyed some nice runs.

TX interference on 40m was another issue causing all kinds of computer problems
and forcing me to use the manual keyer on that band exclusively.

The start of the contest was very slow with the poor Low Band situation and I
only logged 131 QSOs within the first eight hours. 20m opened around 0900z and
15m an hour later leading to small pile-ups at times. At 2030z, 20m closed again
and the fight against the QRN went on. After two hours of rest at midnight, 40m
was a little less noisy and I could enjoy moderate rates of 35 QSO/h for a
couple of hours. Then, frustration got even deeper with 54 QSOs within six hours
on Sunday morning. The high bands opened 3 hours late but then, they provided
better rates on Sunday so that I almost made the same number of QSOs as on
Saturday. Towards the end, some multipliers that I had previously called in
vain, now called me, such as HQ9X, KL0R, YB, VO2NS and HC5M. When 20m closed at
2100z and 40m was as noisy as the first night, I called it a (long) day.

10m never really opened with four QSOs to ZS, 9X, HZ and A6. Only 2% of my QSOs
were with stations closer than 6,500km. Europe (37% of all my QSOs) is between
8,000 and 11,000km and North America (54% of QSOs) between 12,500 and 17,000km.
This makes noise on the Low Bands an even worse problem than in Europe where you
could still work the big guns in that situation.

In the end, the positive aspects prevail and I enjoyed my first DX contest from
South Africa. However, much more would have been possible without the QRN,
especially given the outstanding Low Band conditions this past weekend.

73! Uli ZR2A (DM5EE)


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