[3830] CQWW SSB EA5ON SO(A)SB20 HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: EA5ON
Operator(s): EA5ON
Station: EA5ON

Class: SO(A)SB20 HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:                    
   40:                    
   20: 2047    34      116
   15:                    
   10:                    
------------------------------
Total: 2047    34      116  Total Score = 586,350

Club: EA Contest Club

Comments:

Once again this year I had a number of options open to me, finally I decided to
accompany Victor EA5KV and each one of us do a SOSB entry, me on 20 and him on
15 (me as EA5ON and him as ED5T)

Vic’s place is well equipped for this kind of operation. There is a 17 element
momobeam tribander with a triplexor which we shared, plus Victor had a 4 ele
monobander fixed to EU/JA and I had an Ultrabeam UB50 on a separate tower. So, I
was only limited as to not choosing the beam heading on the Momo as this was
Vic’s primary antenna. 

Station-wise, we both used our new Icom 7610, and I used my expert 1,3 amp. I
went round to the station a few days before the contest to interface to the PC,
update firmware, set up the DVK messages, and try to set the audio to suit the
Yamaha 500 headsets. All set to rock early Saturday morning. 

Saturday was fine, I ended up with over 1000 qsos in the log and a fair amount
of multipliers, but it was extremely difficult to find a spot to call and also
extremely difficult to hear a lot of the eastern multipliers. We have to listen
through the whole of Europe down in this area and it sure makes it hard going.
It reminded me at times of 40m! 

Sunday I was lucky in the morning and found a couple of sweet spots where I was
able to run reasonably well. However I knew that 14159 would be a hard one to
keep when the band opened to the states and eventually I was turfed off. The
afternoon was slow, worse propagation on the higher bands meant more people than
ever on 20 and lower signals from the states. Then, the high noise level got
higher and higher and ended up at S9, making it very hard going for the last 2
hours.

A few random comments:

Fed up once again with big gun stations who sit down on top of you. EA9KB gets
my big razzer award this year. I know its tough, but guys…… maybe you
can’t hear me, but you can hear the pileup calling me. MAKE. THE. EFFORT…..


The Icom 7610. We loved them. The panadapter helps you visually zoom in on the
areas of lower concentration when looking for a clear QRG. Ergonomically very
intuitive. Receiver very good. Noise reduction makes it much less tiring. The
way the RF gain control is set up means you use it often and effectively. The TX
audio must be good, lots of people gave me unsolicited praise. All in all we
were very happy.

The Expert 1,3. I had originally planned on using the K3 for this but there is
no easy ALC control for it and one has to lower to TX power. My K3 has an
intermittent fault where TX power can suddenly spike so I didn’t want to risk
it. The 7610 indeed controls the 1,3 with ALC but I noticed that it was very
spikey, a few 1kw peaks but very low voice average. I didn’t like that at all,
and ended up not using the ALC control. 9w output gave me 1KW out, no issues,
just kept on chugging. Good machine. I could have used my Acom 1000 but for
transport, you can´t beat the Expert. 

N1MM+. First time I´ve used the + version and I like it. Couldn’t quite
figure out an easy way to move the mults from the cluster to receiver B, not
sure if this is an issue with the program or the radio or the operator. Also on
this topic, I found the logic of using the second RX a bit different from the K3
or the FT2000, both of those radios have a dedicated dial for the second RX and
on the 7610 I kept messing up. I guess it’s a question of practice.

Triplexors. Wow. Who would have thought that the two of us could sit all day on
20m and 15m and run a kilowatt through the same triband antenna and not even
notice the other guy. Vic had some interference from me on some parts of 15 but
I didn’t notice him at all. We used double coaxial stubs for filters. 

Murphy. We had a couple of minor issues. One was the PC mouses! One ran out of
batteries, and on my laptop, the internal mouse froze a couple of times,
requiring a reboot. Other than that, the only unexpected issue was a
thunderstorm that crashed through on Saturday afternoon and we missed half an
hour of prime USA time. Apart from that, all worked as planned.

CQWW always brings great moments. That moment for example when KL7RA calls you
and then spots you. And then spots you again the next day. Meeting lots of
friends on the air (not always evident who they are since many of us change
calls, hihi). The endless pileups to the states when the rest of Europe finally
has gone to 40m. The camaraderie with the rest of the Spanish contest
fraternity. Seeing the youth teams in action. And of course, those sandwiches!!

Big thanks to Vic for hosting me this weekend and for all his tech help. And of
course thanks to everyone who either called me, or pulled me out of the noise.
Now, time to think about the CW leg! 

73 de Duncan EA5ON


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