[CCF] Rus DX OH0X(OH6KZP) SO CW HP
Kim Östman
kim.ostman at abo.fi
Mon Mar 18 05:30:49 EDT 2013
La-aamun mailissa luvatun kaltaista "vauhtia ja vaarallisia
tilanteita" tosiaan...! Kiitos OH-kusoista.
73
Kim OH6KZP
-----
Russian DX Contest
Call: OH0X
Operator(s): OH6KZP
Station: OH0X
Class: SO CW HP
QTH: Brando
Operating Time (hrs): 23
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Countries Oblasts
----------------------------------------
160: 237 0 42 51
80: 417 0 59 58
40: 600 0 69 63
20: 616 0 77 70
15: 414 0 79 61
10: 191 0 57 49
----------------------------------------
Total: 2475 0 383 352 Total Score = 10,854,480
Club: Contest Club Finland
Comments:
"Staying awake for 24 hours is a great way to connect with your inner psycho,"
said a friend's unrelated Facebook wall post on Friday morning.
Fortunately it's not quite that bad, but I did choose SOAB CW instead
of SOAB SSB/MIX. Just
in case listening to non-stop splatter would cause my eyes to start
twitching (cf. Homer in "The Simpsons"!) :)
I find the RDXC to be an enjoyable event with a lot of fine Russian CW
operators. I set a new SOAB CW record as my goal and did manage to
exceed the old record, but with insufficient log checking margin. LZ8E
quickly pulled ahead of me at cqcontest.ru and did a superb score,
congratulations!
Looking at my bandwise goals, I fell behind in QSOs on all bands apart
from 15m
and 10m, where I also exceeded the expected multiplier count. All of
this despite (or partly because of overcompensating?) being
handicapped by not being
able to use the main antennas of those two bands. Propagation was I
think better
than it was last year, although the incoming CME clearly impacted
things for the
worse on Sunday. For example the UA0 stations on 15m came in with
strong arctic
flutter since the path from here to there crosses the polar region. It
still made for some interesting condx, however, and during the last
hour I added nearly 1M to the score by working loads of weak but new
oblast multipliers on 10m.
On the 4-hour drive back home I was even treated to the nice spectacle
of visual aurora. In Finland that is quite rare down south in OH1/OH2,
it normally
being the exclusive enjoyment of the guys up north in OH8/OH9.
Then to the "collected explanations," as the Finnish saying goes.
This contest entailed a number of technical troubles that really grate
away at you when you're trying to give it your all. Just before the
start the logging computer monitor gave a "warning" by going blank for
a couple of seconds at a time, sporadically, but during the contest
this fortunately happened only towards the very end. Win-Test/MK2R+
also had some issue throughout the race, with the CW speed sometimes
suddenly rising to 40 WPM when transmission started.
The worst episode, however, was when the logging computer froze around
05z on Sunday morning. I had changed the Radio 2 band to 10m, and the
first transmission there caused everything to freeze. The computer did
not respond to
Ctrl+Alt+Del, so I then turned it off with the switch. When Windows
started up again, Win-Test would immediately crash every time I tried
to start it by clicking the icon.
So there I was, 2000 QSOs in the pocket and 7 hours to go, with no
logging program left...! During the following hour, after first
determining not to quit, I resigned to moving the log file to my
laptop, dropping most of the SO2R, and sending CW manually with the
paddle for the rest of the contest.
While I was operating in this new manner, I thought I'd try the
Windows "safe mode" boot to see if Win-Test would start in that
environment after all, and in
fact it did. I then restored the Windows system registry back to what
it was on
Saturday morning just before the contest, and miraculously enough,
Win-Test worked smoothly again after a normal computer boot. The only
explanation I have is that the meltdown and my ensuing hard switch
shutdown caused some variable or
other to be lost or not to be written into the Windows registry,
leading to the
subsequent software start-up malfunction.
Anyway, it was quite the feeling sitting there sleep-deprived and
seeing your logging computer refuse to run the logging program, the
key to controlling everything! Never expected that one, and it took
some time to sort out the options in my head. Lost nearly one hour
completely and then another partly while working paddle CW and
fiddling to fix the issue with the main computer.
All in all, it was still a nice one. Thanks to the Brändö Island Group
for letting me use their fine station again, and thanks to all for
being on the air!
Kim OH6KZP
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