[CCF] ARRL 10 OH6QU SO CW HP

[oh6qu at netikka.fi]

                    ARRL 10-Meter Contest

Call: OH6QU
Operator(s): OH6QU
Station: OH6QU

Class: SO CW HP
QTH: Vaasa
Operating Time (hrs): 13
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  349    81
  SSB:           
-------------------
Total:  349    81  Total Score = 113,400

Club: 

Comments:

Being on the same latitude as Anchorage in Alaska doesn't make the
contesting easy on 10M, especially when the propagation gets rough.
However it looks like that this time the propagation between the EU
to the USA was in some peculiar way in favour of us living close to
the Arctic Circle despite all those aurora clouds on top of us.   
 
The propagation forecast on Friday afternoon wasn't promising at 
all. Therefore I decided to have evening "off" and go to our
company's Christmas party instead of relaxing before the contest.
Unfortunately we had too much fun at the party and ended up being 
home just after the restaurant was closed at 04:30 AM (02:30 UTC).
A quick look to the band showed that there wasn't going on anything
special at that time - just less than 10 stations from Russia,
Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Croatia. I worked them
and went to sleep.

Waking up next morning wasn't easy! Thanks to the previous night's
party I had an awful headache - too much vodka I guess and whom to  
blame but yourself. I finally got up 07:40 UTC and scanned the band
thru. It didn't look very promising. Hardly nothing heard from the
east; not a single JA, not even UA9/UA0's. Then I turned the stack
of antennas to the south and the band got a bit more crowded. During
the next two hours I managed to log less than 80 QSOs by CQing and
S&P. Besides the Big Guns the signals were watery. So I decided
to do something else while waiting the band to open.
 
I came back 11:30 UTC. As a result of one hour of hard trying I
got 30 QSOs. The highlight of that session was getting thru the
pile-up of P40K - and jeez he was loud even compared to many EU
stations. 

Next time I came back to the radios at 13:30 UTC and then I managed 
to work the first NA stations: K0LUZ and KF3B. Both of them were 
coming via the skewed path (260 degrees). The signals didn't move 
the S-meter but they were very well readable here. I copied a couple 
of more weak US stations but I didn't succeed to draw their
attention to me. After three QSOs I went to do something else while
still waiting the band to open.
 
Instead of band opening, it went completely closed until 18:00
UTC. But then the fun began - between Saturday 18:15 UTC and
22:18 UTC I worked altogether 68 NA stations. The best time was
around 21:00 - 22:00 UTC when I got 40 QSOs. During that particular
hour I even managed to run sometime with a decent QSO rate.
 
The band opened from the North-West USA - the first station at 18:15
UTC was N2OW from MA. He was the only station I got from W1-area
during the entire contest. Then the propagation moved down to
W2/W3-area e.g. N3OC/Md, WE3C/Pa, N2NT/Nj,... After 21:00 UTC 
I was able to copy only W4/W5 stations from the Southern USA and
they had superb but fluttery signals. Finally the band closed 
completely here around 23:00 UTC. The last station I worked from
the USA on Saturday evening was N4IG at 22:18 UTC.

The highlights of Saturday evening were QSOs with N6ZZ/Nm and
XE1MM - both S&P.
 
Sunday morning was sloooow once again and therefore I wasn't
operating very much before the evening. I hoped that the band
would open to the  in the afternoon but it did not happen.

Luckily the Sunday evening did produce even better conditions to
the USA than day before. At 17:40 UTC I went to check the band and 
I was amazed what I heard - lot of NA stations were booming in.
In the beginning the pattern looked very similar than the day before
i.e. the propagations were moving down along the East Coast to the
south but then something that I did not expect happened. I got a
bunch of W8/W9/W0 stations. The first ones were AG9I/In, KI9A/Il,
W0BH/Ks, W9AEM/Mi, KB0VVT/Mo and KG8DH/Oh. In the middle of an
an intense run came a nice surprice: W6BH/Ca - he was the only stn
in the contest I got from West Coast - thanks! Everything was over
by 21:00 UTC when the band closed here.

On Sunday evening the best propagation to the USA was between 18:30
- 19:00 UTC. I ended up having close to 100 QSOs to NA on Sunday.
 
The highlights of Sunday were QSOs with W6BH/Ca and H7A (S&P).

K0LUZ and W5KFT were good "beacons" to check how the propagation 
between Finland and NA is - they were the first ones to show up
and the last ones to disappear when the propagation was changing.

P.S. Not a single VE station in my log - very weird conditions!

Equipment:
2 x Kenwood TS-850S/AT
Top Ten Devices DX Doubler (SO2R controller)
Commander HF-2500/kW
3 x Hy-Gain TH7DX at 115'/73'/31' (4 active elements on 10M/each) 
 
73 and cuagn next year,
Jari OH6QU


Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at:
http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/



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