[3830] RAC Winter VE4WSC M/S HP

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                    RAC Winter Contest - 2022

Call: VE4WSC
Operator(s): VE4DL VE4IM VE4JBB VE4SF
Station: VE4WSC

Class: M/S HP
QTH: MB
Operating Time (hrs): 10:00

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  CW Mults  Ph Mults
----------------------------------------
  160:    0      0       0         0
   80:   25      5       4         4
   40:  106      5       5         3
   20:  209      7       7         3
   15:    6      3       5         3
   10:   22      3       2         2
    6:    0      0       0         0
    2:    0      0       0         0
----------------------------------------
Total:  368     23      23        15  Total Score = 65,892

Club: Radiosport Manitoba

Comments:

On 17 December 2022, Winnipeg Seniors’ Radio Club fielded a Multi-Op,
Single-Radio team at their station VE4WSC. Operators were VE4DL-David,
VE4JBB-Jessy, VE4IM-John and VE4SF-Bruce. Technical support was by VE4YH-Gary
and VE4EA-Cary.
Any successful contest entry starts with the prep work. In this case Equipment
Manager Gary and ace contest Elmer Cary put in significant time setting up the
radio (an ICOM IC-7700) and antennas (the triband Yagi and wires for 40/80) and
the software (N1MM+) so that only a few minutes were required at the beginning
of the contest to get the station properly configured and operational. The
Operations Team is grateful for their hard work. It’s not a trivial thing by
any means. The Tech Team pitches in after the contest as well, returning all to
WSRC-normal.
Things got underway a little after 7pm local, about an hour after the “GO”.
Some small technical glitches were ironed out with a combination of fevered
manual searching, random button pushing and inspired guesses by an IC-7300 user.
Such is normal when not in your own station. A few more glitches were tolerated
until much later when slack time allowed more of the above.
A general comment by all the ops was how broad-banded the WSRC’s antennas are.
A delight not to be pushing “TUNE” every time you changed the frequency.
Also, there was a low noise floor for most of our time there, sparing our ears.

One op brought his favourite paddles (although 99% of the time it was F-key and
keyboard code – so much faster and more accurate) and others brought their own
headsets. Comfort and familiarity are basic for good operations. Particularly
welcome was the appearance of a Winkeyer from John’s pocket. It’s difficult
to do well without one. No-one was familiar with the radio, but there was enough
combined experience in the room to keep it running smoothly. Seniors has quite
an excellent contest radio in the IC-7700. We’ll make it sing once we’ve
done a few more contests with it.
We had the full slate of operators for opening night, and everyone got 45-60
minutes on the air, covering 20-80 m on both phone and cw. It was interesting
that most of the ops there preferred CW to phone, I was expecting the opposite.
You certainly should get higher rates on CW, and we did okay for such a mixed
group of experienced and inexperienced ops. One advantage of being a multi-op
station is having many ears to filter calling stations from the pile-up. By the
end of the evening around 11pm we had 98 QSOs and 15 Multis in the log.
VE4DL was back in the chair shortly before 7am for the beginning of high-band
activity. He was joined 90 min later by VE4SF. Care was taken to work all the
open bands and time out from running was taken to hunt done desirable
Multipliers.  We switched ops about every hour until 1pm, when we had to close
down.
For a total of about 10 hours operating, we managed to log 391 QSOs and 38
Multis for a score of 65,892.  This would put us in around 4th place in our
category, amongst stations reporting to 3830scores.com so far. This is an
excellent result, and the Operating Team wishes to thank Winnipeg Seniors’
Radio Club for the use of their facility, equipment, and especially their
callsign. Many thanks go to the Technical Team for all the unseen work.
Every member of the Operating Team expressed the hope for future opportunities
to contest from this fine station.


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