[3830] ARRLDX CW NN7CW SOAB HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, CW - 2021

Call: NN7CW
Operator(s): NN7CW
Station: NN7CW

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NFL
Operating Time (hrs): 42:21
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  100    27
   80:  411    60
   40:  755    75
   20: 1357    79
   15:  323    62
   10:   40    13
-------------------
Total: 2986   316  Total Score = 2,825,988

Club: Florida Contest Group

Comments:

This one could become my favorite DX contest!

First of all, things seem to be holding up and getting the station ready is
becoming more of a routine, rather than a last-minute-scramble. I took Friday
off, slept in and started my preparations around lunch time. Everything fired up
and and was ready ahead of time. My strategy was to not waste any time on 20,
but rather get started on 40 and see what can be done on 80 as soon as the first
pile-up has calmed down. Interestingly, seeing rates of less than 80 QSOs per
hour, I was not impressed with 40m Friday night. Proportionally speaking, 80m
seemed in better shape, so I went back and forth running on one of the two while
reluctantly engaging in S&P early on the other, just browsing up and down
the spectrum. Checked in on 160, but only stayed for a handful of QSOs before
going back to the aforementioned strategy and that pretty much concludes my
activities until I took a break to be in shape for the Saturday morning
grayline.

When the grayline was kicking in, I spent 30 minutes to collect everything JA
and Oceania had to offer on 80 and 40, which is, considering my relatively small
station, always a fun activity. After that, it was time to go to town on 20 to
get the QSO count up as quickly as possible while watching 15. Not much later I
could get the initial multiplier count moving on 15 for about 30 minutes and
from there it was mostly 20 with some short bursts on 15, alternating with
S&P on 10 to work a few SAs and everything I could here from the Caribbean.
The highest hourly rate (157Q/h) was accomplished at the 14th hour Z. While 15
was definitely better on Saturday, I wouldn't call it awfully exciting - let's
hope for an improvement next year!

Sunset came, brought some JAs and ZLs and that concluded my activities on 20m.
Assuming more of the same, I went down to 40 - rinse and repeat, alternating
between 20 and 80 on the 2nd radio. Tried 160 at 3:07 UTC, worked a dozen and
went back to 80. An hour later 80 was so slow that I decided to goof of on 160
and see if I could complete 100 run QSOs, which I managed within 45 minutes.
While I liked 80m, 160 was kind-a noisy and I needed lots of repeats; thanks
everyone for bearing with me! The new neighbors are still running some of their
Christmas lights and I have a feeling that might be the reason why. I'm planning
to do some testing during the spring Stew.

The rest of the story is wrapped up quickly; more 40 and 80, until I went up to
20 earlier than the morning before and pretty much stayed there for the rest of
the event. 15 was not producing much anymore and the only highlight on 10 was a
lonely ZM4T calling CQ around 22:30Z. At the end I had a feeling that I pretty
much worked what I could, so I am happy with the result.

What I also really liked was that, compared to CQWW, I only encountered a small
amount of US callers. Running Unassisted SO2R means that when you're not running
quickly, you should be doing something with your second radio, so you're always
busy doing something. I understand that the majority of casual operators has
never thought of what a serious 40+h SO2R effort means, but that doesn't help
that making zero-point QSOs is counterproductive.

Two things I did not like: 

1. Sunday morning I was greeted by exciting, grayline-boosted activity and some
fairly loud East coast big guns. Finding myself being wedged in between two of
them and QRM'ed off my established run frequency made me conclude that my signal
is not clicky anymore, while one of them surely was. Maybe it's time for the
ARRL (and the other organizations) to do something about it? Everyone can have a
problem without knowing (it just happened to me), but imo, the larger the signal
footprint of a station is, the more important it is that it is not excessively
wide or dirty. It's 2021 and everyone has a band scope, so things will no longer
go unnoticed.

2. Sunday afternoon (15:00Z) I encountered a simply ridiculous stream of
duplicates while running on 20 (more than half of my total count of 102).
Obviously, my call was spotted incorrectly and people just jumped on it without
listening. I tried everything: repeating my call multiple times and very slowly,
changing around the exchange wording to get some attention, directly announcing
to the group of callers to please listen carefully, but nothing helped. I don't
know what to do about this, but I think it is a good example that more and more
operators substitute copying skills with inattentive bandmap clicking. To keep
the lights on for skilled operators, I really hope the ARRL will not get rid of
the Unassisted category in their contests. Think about it: while not every
Assisted op is a bad one, every Unassisted op is a good one. Please don't lump
these qualitatively different operator groups together.

Thanks everyone and 73!
Wolf


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