[CQ-Contest] OT7T in 160 m Phone contest (the story)

[John Devoldere]

THE 1997 CQ WW 160 M SSB CONTEST

This year, Marc, ON4MA was going to operate. I realised, that after two
excellent years, it was going to be difficult to do better. I already knew
two reasons. First the QRM from the Fabelta Chemical plant (about 7 miles
from here) had reappeared, and was masking all really weak signal when
listening to North America. In addition one of the local farmers had turned
his electric fence into an efficient  spark transmitter, and that was
extremely annoying as well.

When Marc arrived about an hour before the contest, I noticed it was only
the shadow of Marc: a bad cold, sneezing and coughing... One more handicap.

Fifteen  minutes before the start of the contest we spottend Mark, 9X4WW on
1827.5 on CW. After a quick QSO we agreed we would call him 22:00 sharp on
1827.5.  9X4WW was our first QSO for OT7T. Later it turned out that Mark
made only one QSO. He tried hard, but never could break the QRM barrier.
That was  good start. And then came the battle of the QRM. As every year,
you don't work any DX in the first few hours. You just try to survive in the
European QRM. Which is what Marc did.

Guess who was our first North American sta-tion? Of course, Jack, VE1ZZ
broke through the mile high QRM wall at 23:11 z. Marc had to wait until
01:44 to log a second N.A. station, FM5BH, followed a few minutes later by
V47KP. The fact that these guys came through before any of the USA stations
was a bad sign: the polar path was badly attenuated!

Between 02:30 and 07:00 approx. 40 USA stations were worked. There was a 30
minute lasting lift in the band between 06:20 and 06:50, the last half hour
before local sunrise. The station furthest West worked (you can guess once),
was of course K0HA in Neb. Not a single W9 though, not even WZ9Z! In
addition 3 more good DX stations were raised: VP5JP, YS1RRD and XE1RCS. That
was it for the first night. The band folded shortly after 07:00 and Marc had
100 QS's less in the log than last year. Not very very encouraging. This
year no PY0FF, P40 station, no YV station, no TI4CF, no TG9NX... What a
difference with 1996.

Saturday evening was not very exciting either: SV1LK, T99T, A71CW, SV9ANH,
IT9EQO and CN8GI being the only good ones. Marc had to wait until 03:40 to
work his first N.A. station. Between then and sunrise a mere 22 stations
were worked form USA and Canada together, fortunately with a couple more
state multipliers, but nothing inland. During the en-tire contest not a
single station from the 9th or 5th call area was heard! J75T was the only
"real" DX-station worked during the second night.

We also missed the rare European ones: no GJ, no GU, no EA6, no T7, no TK5,
no ZA  (all these WERE worked last year!).

              1995        1996     1997
SCORE      402,401    396,245   245,836
QSOs           755        724       516
DXCC            69         64        59
STATES          24         31        23
QSO's			
N. AMERICA     109        104        72
EUROPA         622        601       428
ASIA            14         14        17
S AMERICA        4          4         0
AFRICA           5          3         3
OCEANIA          1          0         0

It was really amazing to see the comments from US stations on e-mail: most
station seemd to think conditions were very good. Not here!!

DX-window?  Never heard of thois year.... 

I think this is a contest to forget, the sooner the better. Let's hope
conditions are a little better next weekend for the ARRL phone.

73

John, ON4UN 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
john.devoldere at innet.be
Call us in all major 1997 contests: ON4UN or OT7T
John Devoldere (ON4UN-AA4OI)
POBOX 41
B-9000 Ghent (Belgium)


--
CQ-Contest on WWW:        http://www.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
Administrative requests:  cq-contest-REQUEST at contesting.com