[CQ-Contest] W0UN CQWW CW 20M HP

[John Brosnahan]

20M HP
W0UN (W0UA, op)    775,008   1686   4784   38   124


Interesting to note the differences in propagation on
the various bands.  The SE had problems with Europe 
on 80M and said the midwest had the opening.  
Speaking with K0RF, who did a single 80, the conditions
in Colorado were very poor on 80M with the second
night being the worst.  He commented about a one
way wall both to Europe and JA at various times when 
the DX was strong here but would CQ in his face.  
Not very typical for his 3L 80M beam on a monolith 
of a hill.

K8DX had a very fine 20M score and said that Saturday 
was good but Sunday was not so hot.  Just the opposite 
out here.  This was the first attempt at doing 20M CW 
from my station and Saturday was pretty marginal and 
Sunday was much better than typical for the second
day of a contest.  We usually do about 2/3 of the qsos
on the first day and 1/3 on the second day.  This time it 
was about 1/2 and 1/2.

What we always need is for Europe to be good 
out here and this time over 66% of the QSOs were
Europeans.  Running JAs is still a significant part of 
any contest effort from out west but you can't win with
JAs.

The antenna array is a stack of TH7s that have been 
1/4 wave stub matched on 15M not 20M (the broadband 
matching box didn't get finished in time and I had 
single-band matched them on 15M and the WX was
too poor to climb the tower and change out the matching 
stubs!).  So built up a quickie Tee network tuner on 
Thanksgiving and matched the impedance in the shack.

All pretty hokey even for a typical last minute kluge 
but it worked well enough to break the old Tenth Call 
area record of 425K.  Actually W0UA's 775K score from
here blew the old record away!  Looked throught the 97 CQ
Almanac and noted the 775K exceeds the previous 
records in all of the USA call areas except 1, 2, and 8.  
Obviously I am quite pleased with George's efforts from 
a station not quite ready for prime time--ie, using tribanders 
when I have at least 24 elements of various 20M 
monobanders laying around waiting to get installed 
somewhere.

Just wish K8DX had gotten his other antennas 
going in time to do an all band effort instead of doing 
a single 20M and having a bigger single 20M score than
ours.
FB OM!

73  John  W0UN

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