[CQ-Contest] WPX97 CW report

[Martin Ellis]

Report from ZL1ANJ, multi/single.

Thanks again to all contesters for some great contacts in the
WPX CW  1997.

The eight weeks since the WPX phone contest has seen a change in the
seasons with winter approaching here in New Zealand, and summer in
the northern hemisphere.  In the phone contest 80m and 10m were in
reasonable shape from the South Pacific.  However in the CW WPX,
electrical noise made 80m almost unusable, and low sun angles
limited any 10m opportunities.

Leaving home on Saturday morning we ran into a storm front that dumped
4 inches of rain in 3 hours, and nearly brought traffic to a standstill.
Arrived at the station site with just one hour for make ready
before the WPX was to start.  Dragan ZL1/YU1UN brought some needed
CW skills but he had not used a computer log before, so we agreed
that for the first session Dragan would decode the CW,
and I would key the CT program. Remembered to use the <nocwabbrev>
command to send normal characters for 1,9 and 0.  
If I was given ATNA instead of a serial number I just kept sending nr?
until it was sorted out.  Dragan seemed to cope OK.


We started the contest on 15 m with a runs for two hours stateside
and one hour to JA.  20m died about 0430z so we moved to 40m
and stayed there most of the (local) night.   Checked 80m and
could hear one consistent station, K3EST, but could not work him
because of the 10 minute rule (sorry Bob).   In the morning
at 2000z  (8.00 am local) checked 15m and had a fantastic run
for 3 hours of Europeans on the long path (via South America).

The skip shortened up at 2300z and we had a stateside run on 15m
until 0300z when 20m gave better run rates.  This time 20m
stayed open until 0700z, and so it was over to 40m-
until in the middle of the night, 20m reopened at 1300z.
At daybreak  we checked  15m but it refused to open, so continued
to run Europeans on 20m long path until 2230z.  After an hour
on 15m we found a small opening on 10m and finished the contest
with just 6 contacts on 10m.

It would be nice to get more activity going from ZL-VK.  We worked
just 34 contacts in our continent Oceania, compared to
1039 contacts in North America, 412 Asia, and 380 to Europe.  

The band breakdown was 40m= 567, 20m= 514, 15m= 757,and 10m= 4.
    

Regards

Martin ZL1ANJ


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