[3830] YOTA 9A21Y(@9A1TT) M/S-Youth HP

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                    YOTA Contest - 2021

Call: 9A21Y
Operator(s): 9A5MX EI8KW KA4RLL S56A
Station: 9A1TT

Class: M/S-Youth HP
QTH: JN85GV
Operating Time (hrs): 12
Remote Operation

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Mults
---------------------------
   80:  159    113     61
   40:  160    185     76
   20:   81     46     48
   15:          25     21
   10:    1      2      3
---------------------------
Total:  401    371    209  Total Score = 347,985

Club: Bosnia and Herzegovina Contest Club

Comments:

A wonderful contest.. short enough for youngsters of all ages to join in, yet
long enough to hone their skills.
With 3 contests throughout the year, in May, July and December, each provides a
unique experience as the day time/night time propagation differs drastically
from one contest to the next.  The special call 9A21Y was requested for the 3
contests.  Operating remotely brings its own challenges… in an attempt to
simplify matters in May’s contest we had a simple logger in the browser and
kept a tally of mults in Google sheets..despite the low rate, this proved to be
too cumbersome a task, and our log was a real mess..it meant we lost a massive
chunk of our QSOs in the UBN check and having claimed 1st place, ended up 2nd. 
In July’s contest, we avoided a repeat of the above by using DXlog with a
server in the cloud and came out on top with a much reduced UBN loss. 
Yesterday’s contest was an opportunity to build on our success from July…but
sadly it wasn’t to be. 
Having advertised extensively for our 9A0YOTA operation throughout the month,
across many FB groups, we managed to muster a team of some 25 ops from all parts
of the world. I had hoped that we’d easily form a team exclusively of
youngsters from the above for the YOTA contest.  Unfortunately not all of our
operators were able to participate as they had hoped..some had unrest in their
country to deal with, others had sick family members to care for and of course
the pandemic disrupted all our plans.  Despite some last minute advertising to
the YOTA and local FB groups, no additional operators were forthcoming.  It
meant we had to reach out to our older community of friends and mentors to help
out.  That meant that Marijan S56A and William F5SNJ joined the team of six,
with youngsters Ryan, EI8KW, Tom F4HWS, Karl, Sven 9A5MX and Furkan (TA7AOF)
ensuring we’d meet the quota of 1 OM per 2 Youngsters, as outlined in the
rules.
 

Just 3hours before the contest Furkan had to drop out. Unfortunately his PC was
lacking the resources to support the 3 client softwares we use...(if you would
like to donate a better PC to Furkan, please contact me).  Luckily, I had
foreseen such and organized a backup op: AI6V Wyatt would step in for a few
hours.  
 
The station (I thought) was ready.  We had 2 Flex 6600 one with a PGXL and the
other an OM2000A+…feeding a 8x2 switch from 4O3A, sharing monobanders on all
bands..along with 2 x 300m beverages for NE & NW.  I was wrong.. having
returned from the UK just a day earlier, and being focused on gathering more
operators, I failed to organize a test of the station for the planned RUN / MULT
setup..any radio on any band… unfortunately I had forgotten about a piece of
software protection we had installed to prevent just that (any radio any
band)..as the 2 stations are normally used in a fixed band-allocation
environment, with no overlap.  With some initial connection issues preventing us
from starting until 12h20z, the above issue was then discovered…. 
It meant we could only run with a single station…  no multing could be done…
this killed our score bigtime, with 10 and 15m in marginal shape, where we could
have had the mult station picking up 50-60 extra mults…we were forced to stay
on the primary bands and simply run..and as such for the first 5hours of the
contest. 

Later, I was able to grab the attention of Lee WW2DX, to make the necessary
changes.  Lee (on holiday - thanks!) altered the code and within 15mins we were
back in business with 2 stations… but from a points perspective it was too
late..10 and 15m were now closed and weren’t going to reopen…
 
We pushed on despite all of this knowing that we had a good station on 40 and
80m and we could pass local mults to 10 and 15m from there. Passing mults is a
skill one has to learn… so our younger ops struggled a little at first, but
soon got the hang of it. 40 and 80m were in good shape and the QSOs kept coming.
 

Wyatt was supposed to join us for the last few hours, but having travelled to
the mountains (for his first skiing experience) he messaged me to say he was
stuck in traffic...  we were short of a youngster to satisfy the rules.  I got
messaging SQ8L and F4HWS (who had previously operated with us)... Tom (F4HWS)
had his ipad with him and was able to make a few QSOs - oh the beauty of remote
:-).

In all the rush, I had forgotten to set up the online score broadcast..and when
doing so found us neck and neck with E7CW and creeping up on RHR-neighbours
K8Y.
>>>I hope online scoring becomes mandatory soon, and that broadcasted
data be treated as submitted..  making for true real-time scoring.<<<
   
The team pushed on to 1am local and despite being down on mults (due to my screw
up), managed to reach our QSO total from July's contest. 

Well done team!  Next time, I promise to test the station beforehand..to train
you all for passing multipliers...better communicate the strategy behind
"choice of band", explain the 10minute rule etc etc      

Thank you to my team of mentors: F5SNJ, 9A5MX and Stefano IZ3NVR..without whom
this wouldn't be possible.
And last but not least to Sanjin (E71DX) for stepping in last minute to host the
DXLog server.

Congratulations to K8Y who benefitted from higher activity in EU, making for 3
pointers... at arm's reach from Maine ;-)
 
We will be back :-)


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