[NCC] Fwd: ARRLDX CW W1NN SOAB Limited-Ant LP

[Hal Offutt]

ARRL DX Contest, CW - 2024

Call: W1NN
Operator(s): W1NN
Station: W1NN

Class: SOAB LP
Class Overlay: Limited-Ant QTH: OH
Operating Time (hrs): 33
Remote Operation

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160:   13 12
80:   113 52
40:   317 75
20:   373 76
15:   475 76
10:   413 86
-------------------
Total: 1704 377 Total Score = 1,927,224

Club: North Coast Contesters

Comments:

Fantastic conditions on both the high bands and the low bands! This was 
one for
the record books.

I operated my station in Ohio remotely from Tokyo. It's a modest station 
with
coax-fed wire dipoles at around 40-45 feet for 160, 80, 40 and 20. The 40
dipole serves double duty as my 15 antenna. I use either the 80 or the 20
dipole for 10. The K3 loads these antennas on 10 but clearly they are 
not ideal
and sometimes I feel very weak on the band. I've been remoting this 
station for
12-13 years and for most of that time 10 was not a priority. If I 
continue to
have a station in Ohio to remote and if 10 conditions continue like 
this, I will
need to put up something better.

Japan is 14 hours ahead of Ohio so for me the contest starts at 9 AM on
Saturday and ends at 8:59 AM on Monday morning. 10 and 15 open to Europe 
around
9 PM my time so if I want to do well, I need to be at the radio during the
9PM-1AM time slot. This is not hard on Day One, but by 9 PM on Day Two I am
usually pretty exhausted by this time. This year I stayed in the chair 
from the
contest start until just after 3 AM my time, or about 18 hours. I had 1,036
contacts in the log.

Over the years, I have found that it is pretty difficult to run at my 
station
during the first day of a DX contest and usually what running I can manage
happens on the second day, so this year I didn't try running much during the
first few hours and rates were pretty low. I probably should have done more
running on the first day since I was being heard pretty well. But in the 
0700Z
hour I discovered that 20 was wide open and people were answering my CQs 
so I
had a real Field Day over the next three hours. This was 2 -5 AM in Ohio and
there didn't seem to be many US stations on, so I felt like I had the 
band to
myself. I added a couple hundred contacts during this time including a 
97Q hour
from 0900 to 1000Z.

I wasn't planning on a full effort this year, but with the great 
conditions I
decided to put in as much time as this ageing body would permit, so I 
was back
in the chair at 22:18Z (0718JST) to catch the last couple of hours of of 
the 10
and 15 openings and then work on the low bands. Unfortunately the
middle-or-the-night 20 meter opening didn't materialize on Day Two so things
were pretty slow until 15 opened and I actually took a break to have 
dinner with
the XYL. But when 15 opened it really opened! and I had my best hour of the
contest (135) during this time. But by 1530Z, things had slowed and I 
was too
exhausted to continue so I went to bed, rising in time to operate the 
final two
hours.

Operating a station in Ohio remotely from Japan has its advantages and
disadvantages. One of the latter is the confusion element. I find it's 
really
difficult to keep track of the times in various places to make sure that 
I'm on
the right band at the right time. I keep a table showing UCT, EST and 
JST, but
with exhaustion I find that sometimes I totally lose track of what I'm 
doing and
where I am. It was especially bad at times this year and sometimes I 
couldn't
figure out if I should be calling US stations or DX stations. I was 
physically
present in Japan in a DX location but I was supposed to be working only DX.

Normally the remote works very well and does not interfere with my 
operating but
this time when coping with heavy EU pileups, I noticed that quite a few EU
stations were silent when I came back to them, requiring me to send my info
again. I think they were dumping their calls in again while I was coming 
back
to them. I think the problem was partly the remote latency. But I wonder if
ops are more impatient these days. If you don't respond to a station in 0.02
seconds, they drop their callsign in again.

Conditions were really superb and I felt a lot louder than usual. I was 
able to
make 78 JA contacts and I worked a lot of mults that usually can't hear 
me such
as E2, A7, BV, etc. I hope these conditions hold up for a few more 
years. They
make the contest a lot more fun!

Thanks for the contacts!

73, Hal W1NN remote in Tokyo


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