[CQ-Contest] ARRL Phone DX Contest: K3ZO comments (12 Kbytes)

[De Syam]

Before I did my usual speel I had wanted to see more breakdowns so
I could better guess what I did wrong, but guess I will have to be
content to use K5ZD (W2SC, opr) as a sole reference since that's
about all I have seen so far.

Compared to last year my score dropped considerably, about 500K,
300 QSOs and 36 multipliers.  Top band was off by 30%, 80 meters by
60%, 40 meters by 30%, 20 meters by 8%, 15 meters was a wash and
only 10 meters was an improvement, by 50%.  Maybe this latter
figure at least shows that we are beginning to creep upwards on the
sunspot cycle.

This was the weekend to get the new FT-1000-MP broken in on SSB,
since it had largely been used on CW up to this point.  I spent
most of Friday afternoon on 160 SSB adjusting the vox, the DVK-100,
recording my messages, getting rid of RF Feedback, etc.  Except for
a bit too much of a tail, the vox seemed to work OK, and I figure
I'll fine-tune it later.  Some of the guys like the gang at 6D2X
who were real quick on the trigger had already spit out the whole
exchange by the time I was in receive mode, but I learned to live
with that as the weekend wore on. 

Perhaps I should have been forewarned at the beginning of the
contest by the performance of 20 meters.  I began as usual with the
beam to the South and after only about 8 minutes everything except
6D2X had dropped out, and I had already worked them!  So I went to
40 and found the usual loud Southern Europeans there and easy to
work, but nothing further north than Switzerland.  By the time 0050
rolled around I had already run the beam to the South and was
picking off the Caribbean and South American stations. 

At 0120 I went to 80 and, thanks to a front-to-back ratio which is
not very good on that band, noticed immediately the high noise
level coming from what I was later to find out were all the storms
in the US midwestern states spawning tornadoes and floods which
killed and injured a large number of people.  At least here in the
local area the weather was cool and drizzly most of the weekend,
which kept the local line noise to a minimum.  I picked a frequency
above 3800 and attempted to run some Europeans but I quickly
learned that I could copy only some of them through the noise. 
Tired of asking for countless repeats and missing half the stations
that were calling me, I broke that off at 0140 and went around
calling the Europeans who were running W's.  Ten minutes later I
turned the beam south and worked the Caribbean and South American
stations that were there.  

By 0310 I was on 160 and found that the QRN didn't bother me as
much there as on 80, and most Caribbean signals were reasonably
loud and well over the noise.  At about 0600 there was a European
sunrise opening of sorts which bumped the European signals up above
the noise to where I could copy most of them.  No European sunrise
opening on 40, however, but the VK's were in OK at 0700.  CQ'ing
between 3750 and 3775 around 0800 brought answers from a few PY's
and LU's but by 0900 I was ready for bed, mostly out of boredom.  

Back on at 1100, I noticed that the Australians operating split and
transmitting between 3680 and 3700 were really quite strong.  The
first thing I had heard so far that was above average.

Thence to 20.  Saturday morning on 20 accounted for the only really
healthy runs of the whole weekend, with four hours with rates of
over 100 each.  I was bothered by a bit of RF feedback which
stretched out the VOX tail a bit.  On 20 I have a 6-el Telrex Yagi
at 150 feet and a 4-el dual-driven quad at 78 feet.  During the
earlier hours of the opening to Europe, at this point in the
sunspot cycle, the higher Yagi plays better, and I was using it
until the rain became heavy for a couple of hours, at which point
precipitation static showed up on the Yagi.  At this point I got
the idea to tranmsit on the Yagi and receive on the quad, which
never has precipitation static.  The FT-1000-MP makes this exercise
easy, and all I had to do was move the feedline from the quad to a
different port.  At this point I also discovered the reason for my
RF feedback problem, as the quad connector had not been screwed
down tight on the antenna switch.

At 1415 I listened on 15 for Europe and found the band marginally
open.  I couldn't run anything with a 4-el dual-driven quad at 78
feet, but I could go around and call the Europeans I heard and they
would answer.  The rain had made the band nice and quiet and I
picked up some Southern European multipliers at the expense of
having my rate drop.  By 1450 I was back on 20 again.  And I stayed
there until 1900 when I made my customary trek to 10, figuring that
if 10 will be open it will likely be at that time.  

I was not disappointed and immediately began to knock off LU's and
PY's.  The optional hot front end on the FT-1000-MP, which I have
found really only benefits 10 meters (and maybe 12 meters, which I
haven't checked yet) was nice to have this time as all the line
noise was gone and I could use all the extra gain.  Very surprising
were the loud signals from VP9ID and W0GJ/C6A, who were evidently
the beneficiaries of some sporadic E opening.  The only QSO where
the hot front end probably made the difference between making it or
not was with V26B.  There was no direct skip between us and I
assume we were working on backscatter off of South America.  At any
rate, congratulations to the 10 meter operator at V26B for having
a great pair of ears!  V26B and VP9ID ended up being my only 6-
banders.

At 1935 I ran out of stations to work on 10 and headed for 15 
to knock off multipliers to the South.  Starting at the bottom of
the band the first thing I ran into was ZP5WYV who was actually at
about 21199.8 or something like that.  I called him at 21200.13
acccording to the FT-1000-MP and worked him but was chided by some
unidentified sport for being out of the band.  One thing I miss not
having on the MP is a calibrator locked to WWV so I can see for
myself where I am rather than having to trust the MP's dial
reading.  For all I know the unidentified complainer was right, but
from the indications I had I was OK.


At 2030 I had taken one twirl through the 15 meter band and had
worked everything that took less than three calls to work, and I
was back on 20.  Europe was still coming in and I got back to
running it, this time putting the 6-el Yagi squarely on CN8-land 
to take advantage of the ability to attract African callers as well
while running Europeans.  At this time of day, the European signals
do not seem to drop off when I use this beam heading, and it even
helps some of the middle-Europeans to work me side-scatter after
the direct path between us has dropped out.  9L1MA, 5N0RMS,
EA8/DL7AU and WH6X/6Y5 were among those who called me during this
period.   

At 2120 I went to 40 and though I did work G, GW, DL, GI, HA and OK
multipliers which had not been there Friday night, things were slow
and at 2205 I was back on 20 with the beam on Japan.  The JA
opening was not bad though the skip was very selective.  Early on
I heard Delaware's AA1K running the JA's nicely but I could not get
a run going though I could call JA's and they would return.  Later
on, at 2230, I began to have a run of my own.  The occasional OH
was mixed in with the JA callers.

Back on 40 at 2315 I was not able to run Europeans at a reasonable
rate, so back I went to 20 at 2345 where I could still run JA's. 
Not much else from over that way was heard although I did log
RW0MM, and finally a barely audible YB2CPO went into the log.  It
was nice to have zero line noise for a change and the 1000-MP is a
nice quiet receiver under such conditions.  I called KH7R at this
time who complained that this was the first he had heard me, where
had I been?  Maybe I had zigged when I should have zagged, but I
did already have other Hawaiians in the log on 40 and 20.

One look at 80 at 0040 showed that noise conditions there were no
better than the first night.  Forty was no great shakes either so
at 0120 I knocked off for a couple of hours, back at 0320.  Things
were still not good and it was a ballet between 160, 80 and 40    
desperately searching for anything new at all to work until 0530
when conditions on 80 to Europe began to pick up.  Sincere
apologies to the OH and RA3 who called at this time but whose calls
I could never drag through the noise.   At 0610 I knocked off
again, not to return until 1000, when I immediately encountered a
nice loud L40H on 80.  The Hawaiians and KH8 were nice and loud
also -- the band actually sounded halfway decent for a change --
and JF1IST working split quickly went into the log also.

At 1040 I went to 40 and managed to work a couple of JA's who were
coming in side-scatter with the beam straight west.  Not a good
heading to be heard well through the BC QRM on their end, and I
couldn't get a couple of others I called.   Congrats to JH4UYB and
the YL at JA1YFG for the best pairs of ears over that way.
    
By 1110 I was up on 20 ready to stake out "my" run frequency for
the morning.  I made the poor tactical decision to select 14179.5,
not realizing at the time that I was only 1.5 KHz above the W2ONV
"how's my audio?" gang on 14178.  When EA3JE fired up there at 1300
his audio just destroyed me.  Then it was on to find another run
frequency on an already crowded band, several attempts to start
runs brought complaints from the Europeans on adjacent frequencies
who moved over to tell me I was too close to them.  I keep asking
myself, if I can hear all right when I'm that close to them, why
can't they hear as well when they're that close to me?  I know, the
guy on the high side is at a disadvantage, but more often than not
it was the guy on my low side who complained.  Oh well, I finally
ended up at about 14215 about 200 Hz above K5ZD (W2SC, operator). 
I have no idea who got there first but we coexisted merrily for
about two hours.  A few Europeans advised me to move but the rate
meter was doing about as well as it did all morning long, so I
guess for every European that was hearing him better a different
one was hearing me better.  From the looks of his score I certainly
wasn't putting a dent in his rate, and his backscatter signal was
not bothering me in the least.  The only times I was briefly
bothered is when a loud European would call him, but a quick
exchange later the QRM was gone.  

There was another advantage -- we kept the loud Europeans off each
other.   On the four or five occasions during the period where he
was silent for a couple of minutes, the frequency remained just as
clear when he fired back up again.   As for me, I managed one pit
stop during that time and came back to find things just as I had
left them.  

Nothing much more to remark about except that the Asian opening was 
good again Sunday and I found HL and DU multipliers without having
to get into a big pile-up.  As for 40, it was good for running
right at the end of the contest and I finally managed my first
Scandinavians on that band -- OZ9KY and SL3ZV -- just before the
end.  

So far the FT-1000-MP doesn't seem to have made a difference, has
it?  Is the venerable TS-830-S really that good, has it just been
conditions, or does the learning curve of the 59- year-old operator
take a little more time to work itself through before the results
begin to show?  Probably some of all three.  I had no real
complaints about it -- once or twice I was flustered becuase you
have to make sure both VFO's are programmed for the correct mode
before you can work split on a new band, but outside of that and
one brief call on the wrong frequency during an attempt at split
operation (I caught myself before any cop called it to my
attention) I was happy with the sound and performance of the new
rig.  The WPX later this month will provide another test.

                                        Very 73,

                                        Fred Laun, K3ZO



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