[3830] CQWW CW OH5Z M/2 HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2022

Call: OH5Z
Operator(s): HA8RT OH1WZ OH4XX OH5CZ OH6XX OH7CW OH7WV UR8UQ
Station: OH5Z

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  342    19       72
   80: 1232    31      108
   40: 2202    37      129
   20: 2175    39      139
   15: 1568    38      140
   10:  297    33      122
------------------------------
Total: 7816   197      710  Total Score = 13,876,193

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

Boy was this fun! The SFI of 115 for the weekend didn't look too promising for
higher bands. Ilkka, OH1WZ, did really extensive propagation forecasts and it
looked like that we would not have more than 1,5h JA propagation in the morning
and similar to NA in the afternoon on 15m. That didn't sound anything we could
challenge big boys in the south nor even existing OH-record held by OH1F since
2013.

We had almost the same team as earlier years joining us. Two team members were
replaced by two new ones: Alex, UR8UQ, and Tomi, HA8RT. Both did splendid job
and they fit into the team perfectly. Rest of the team were already OH5Z
veterans who knew what was expected from them and every one of them excelled
performance. Really nice job!

Like forecasted we didn't have good enough propagation on 20m in the beginning
of the contest and we needed to start on 40m and 80m. Sometimes we have
struggled at the low bands at the start but this time we didn't. Five first
hours were well over 200Q/h.

Quite early in the Saturday morning both stations were moved to 15m and 20m
respectively beaming East. Being in the Eastern part of Finland and having a
good take off to the East we feel we have some kind of advantage towards East.
At least in comparison to our OH and Scandinavian competitors. 

Since the SFI was quite low we decided to work 40m all day Saturday. Stations at
the Nordics can beam JA and US at the same time and get three-pointers from both
directions. This was something HA8RT had not experienced South in HA. He thought
we were joking on him when he was put on the RUN2 position and said to beam to
JA and NA on 40m in the bright daylight. Well we weren't :)

Late in Saturday evening we had a short over the pole propagation when we were
able to run US on the high bands. It wasn't more than 1,5h but still produced a
lot of QSO-points.

Long SAT-SUN night was pretty uneventful. We worked the low bands and switched
bands as soon as the previous dried off. During the time we had the only 2 less
than 100q/h hours of the whole contest. Inband stations really helped to keep up
the rate. We made 2100+ inband QSO's out of 7800 total. Could be our best ever.

Sunday propagation was pretty similar to the Saturday, but we gave high bands
more weight over the 40m DX's. In M/2 it is always a balance between the best
RUN bands and the bands where one lacks multipliers. 

On Sunday evening we had really nice auroral opening towards US. All three bands
10, 15 and 20m were open and yet another balancing was needed. 10m propagation
was rather good but the pipeline was narrow. Mostly zone 4 stations coming
through. On 15 and 20m it was different story. Band was really well open to all
over NA. And 20m was open to JA at the same time. Beaming to JA was pretty
useless as it was Monday morning coming up and no one on the band.

We passed old OH M/2 record 7,5 hours before the end of the contest. We ended up
with 13,8M points which fifth best ever score in Finland. Only four OH2U M/M
scores from 1998-2001 have been better.

I am really proud of our score and really wished that Peter, OH5NQ, would have
been there to see our score in the end. Peter's picture is next to one of the
operating positions. He is watching us and pushing us to even better
performance.

Thank you all for the QSO's!

73,
Juha OH6XX on behalf of OH5Z team


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