[CCF] CQWW SSB OH6NIO SOAB HP Assisted

[Teijo Murtovaara]

                    CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 2003


      Call:      OH6NIO
      Category:  Single Operator Assisted
      Power:     High Power
      Band:      All Band
      Mode:      SSB 
      Country:   Finland
      Zone:      15

      BAND     QSO   QSO PTS  PTS/QSO   ZONES COUNTRIES


      160       16       15     0.94      3      15
       80       74       96     1.30      8      47
       40      107      177     1.65     18      68
       20      384      649     1.69     31     110
       15      870     1872     2.15     34     120
       10      164      316     1.93     24      85
     ---------------------------------------------------

     Totals   1615     3125     1.93    118     445  =>  1,759,375



All reports sent were 59(9), unless otherwise noted.

Equipment Description: FT 1000MP + kW homebrew amplifier (80 - 10m), IC-765 
100W, CTwin-network + telnet DX-cluster, CAT, automatic antenna switching.

Antennas: 40m - 10m 2 - 5 element yagis, 80m vertical & dipole, 160m dipole.

Comments:

In the beginning the contest was a mixture of dead slow S&P operating hours and 
equipment problems that almost made me pull the big switch. Later on Sunday I 
enjoyed the best DX pile-ups in many years and the technical problems were over.

It was very difficult to pull out some of the DX-multipliers thanks to the poor 
propagation and the big pile-ups. Some seemingly strong DX-stations were nearly 
impossible to work whereas another similar but much weaker station was a 
one-shot.

Week before the contest I made some final tests with my new setup with CAT, 
automatic antenna switching and the computer network with telnet cluster access. 
Everything was working smoothly without any RFI and all I had to do is just 
calmly wait for the contest weekend when the hard work would have been rewarded 
with endless stream of juicy multipliers and DX-contacts just flowing into my 
log. Well, my station was actually not quite that ready because I was still 
waiting for the band pass filters. I was also using low power on 160m and the 
2nd radio was running 100W too. Anyway I thought that this would be one golden 
opportunity to test all the new stuff.

I was busy at work all week prior to the contest so there was no time to play 
with the radios. Late at thursday evening I thought that I should finally get a 
feel of the propagation. To my great surprise 15m was very quiet. I could not 
even hear the normal background noise. When I tried to transmit I realized that 
my radio is not working properly. After a brief check on the other bands 
revealed that the problem was only on 15m on the main radio. The sub RX worked 
fine on all bands. I figured out that there must be something wrong with the 
main PLL-VCO chain but I did not have any service manual available so I had to 
disassemble the whole radio before I could locate the faulty circuit board. I 
could not get it fixed so I went to bed very dissapointed. I had almost lost all 
my motivation to enter the contest.

On friday I was back home around 7PM and I was originally supposed to be 
sleeping at that moment but I was once again busy fixing my broken radio. When I 
finally had my radio back in the line it was already too late to hit the sack. I 
just scanned through the bands and feared that maybe the radio was still broken.

When the contest started the bands were in very bad shape. The propagation was 
blocked into the north for the whole weekend so I could not even hear a whisper 
from KL7 or KH6-stations. After 1 hour I got so tired that I had to get some 
shut eye. In the morning I woke-up still very tired around 06Z and I started to 
S&P on 40m. The DX-stations weaker than normally but I managed to pull out a few 
good ones. The DX-propagation was very poor for running any pile-ups and I did 
not feel like working a lot of Europeans so I concentrated on hunting for the 
multipliers. Occasionally I took a break because there was no hurry with the 
contest. The first day yielded only 448 QSOs and 324 multipliers.

I was still very tired in the night so I took a good break and I was back at my 
radio at 07AM Sunday morning. It was the last time to pull out those caribbean 
signals on 40m. I noticed immediately that there had been a major change for 
better in the propagation. Around 08Z I run for a while on 20m for Europe but 
before 09Z I jumped briefly to 15m and then to 10m and back and forth. I was 
still S&Ping for multipliers. Around 11Z I looked for a good spot on 15m and 
finally got one. The next 4 hours were the highlight of the contest. The band 
opened into the states and the last ten min. rate was peaking 300+. At 15Z the 
band took a slight dive and around 16Z I had to S&P again to get some more QSOs. 
It was hard to notice once again that the guys from Europe were running into the 
states with endless supply of callers. 18Z I had a decent run into Europe on 20m 
but the rest of the contest was mostly S&Ping and looking for the new  
multipliers. The last 3 hours of the contest resulted in 46 new multipliers. I 
was surprised that 48% of my QSOs were DX. If I had run more the DX-percentage 
would have been much lower along with the increasing number of European QSOs. 
Considering the problems and the challenging propagation I was quite satisfied 
with my result. Monday at 00Z suddenly the raging bands calmed down and one more 
exciting show was over. I can't wait for the CW part.

Thank you for the QSOs!

73 de Teijo, OH6NIO