[3830] ARRL Dig ZP5AA(W3MLJ) SO1R-24 Youth LP

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                    ARRL Digital Contest - 2023

Call: ZP5AA
Operator(s): W3MLJ
Station: ZP5AA

Class: SO1R-24 LP
Class Overlay: Youth 
QTH: GG14
Operating Time (hrs): 22
Remote Operation

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:     
   40:    2
   20:   41
   15:  402
   10:   92
    6:     
------------
Total:  535  Total Score = 11,079

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:

Firstly, I would like to give a huge thanks to Danny, ZP5DBC for letting me
operate his amazing station!

 

The contest started out with a rocky start, was planning on doing a full SO2R
operation. A few minutes before the contest, WSJTX decided to start locking
up… So had to switch to SO1R a few minutes before the contest started. It had
worked for about an hour, then it would not call anyone back. Auto sequence and
call 1st was on. So after about an hour of trying other programs, and they would
not work at all, finally decided to just try to click on every macro to send.
This was challenging as you had less than a second to do it… Finally, I had
found a setting that was in the deep menus of WSJTX, it had worked after 4–5
hours of frustration and minimal contacts. Still only had SO1R but figured some
contacts are better than none. Throughout the contest, it was also not decoding.
Sorry to those who had called, and I was not responding… But after
reinstalling WSJTX, it seemed like the contest went ok.  After the contest was
over, we decided to see if we could get SO2R WSJTX working, and it had worked
perfectly fine. So, my only guess is maybe the exchange for the contest set
WSJTX into a frenzy.

 

This was my first time operating in South America and propagation was amazing…
15 meters being open almost the whole day was amazing. Spent lots of time on 15
as at one point I had callers from 6 continents on the same cycle. To me, only
experiencing propagation from the USA for contests was mind-blowing. I switched
to 40 for a bit of time, and it was sadly not that good. But 15 was open and
went back to it. During the last hour of the contest switched to 20 to see what
was on there. And WOW it was an instant full screen pileup, with at one point 23
callers on one cycle. I had never ever seen this in my life before.

 

This was an incredible opportunity to see what propagation is like and still put
up a pretty good score.

Thanks to all those who called!

Best 73,

Michael W3MLJ (17 years old)


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