[3830] ARRLDX CW W9RE SOAB HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW - 2019

Call: W9RE
Operator(s): W9RE
Station: W9RE

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: IN
Operating Time (hrs): 44
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  111    57
   80:  378    74
   40:  879   101
   20: 1340   101
   15:  250    74
   10:    0     0
-------------------
Total: 2958   407  Total Score = 3,555,552

Club: Society of Midwest Contesters

Comments:

Sorry for the late post.  This morning after getting up at noon I had to race to
babysitting grand daughters and just got home Monday night. 

First, thanks to the tens of thousands of contesters all over the world that
were active this weekend to help feed the contesting addiction.  It is hard to
put into words what this addiction is when trying to explain a contest to a non
amateur person.  For larger stations it is the rate or run that makes it
addicting.  My wife leaves to pick up a pizza (normal round trip is 25 minutes)
and in what seems like 5 minutes, she is back.  When things are active, time
just flies especially when trying to manage 2 radios.  It seems like every time
my wife comes in the shack and wants to ask me a question I am again trying to
copy a weak station on my run frequency and working a mult on the S and P radio
and I can't even put together an answer.  
For a bigger station a lot of time is put into maintenance almost every week and
for a few weekends during the season to operate.  Thus the addiction.  I am
addicted to 3 or 4 things in life.  One is the contests but a couple of others
have also reared themselves.  One is a non addiction to sugar since for me it is
addicting.  I drink virtually no carbonated beverages other than beer, eat no
pastries, ice cream, cookies, etc. that I know have sugar.  Another addiction
for me that I think a lot about (because the contests interrupts it) is my
addiction to achieving 10,000 steps (5 miles)  every day.  Sitting at a radio
for 44 hours in a 2 day period is not a good thing but I do it just 4 times a
year so that is not too  bad.  Since I play a lot of tennis the 10,000 steps is
easy to attain on most days and it does require dedication on others to achieve
it.   I have incorporated a standing position off to the side of the main
position that I move to a few times a weekend but it is not that convenient
since I don't have good access to either radio.    
I have been very fortunate to have an understanding wife for all these years.  I
have operated seriously for over 45 years now.  First contest was in 1962 in my
first year of high school and first year of being licensed.  I digress.
Conditions were not that great but I guess they could have been worse without a
good opening on 160.  Signals here were never loud but very consistent and I
spent a lot of hours DX'ing that band.  I had some noise problems on that band,
an electric fence was bothering me to the NE and to the SE must have been some
powerline noise but it is hard to keep up with all the noise sources any more. 
It used to be just powerline sources but now in my 20 surrounding neighborhood
there are many in home noise sources.   80 meters was again good not great but
signal levels were strong and not much noise.  40 and 20 were good also but
absent was a decent Asia opening.  I only worked a handful of JA's the whole
weekend.  15, I might have mistimed my operation here.  It was hard to leave a
good hour on 20 and I might have stayed too long there for the short opening to
Europe on 15.  I checked 10 a lot but never heard one signal there.  
Seems like every 5th Q Sunday afternoon on 40 was a QRP station-sorry for asking
for so many repeats but.


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