[SCCC] ARRLDX SSB N5ZO SOAB HP

[marko.n5zo at gmail.com]

                    ARRL DX Contest, SSB - 2024

Call: N5ZO
Operator(s): N5ZO
Station: N5ZO

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 44
OpMode: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    9     9
   80:   43    24
   40:  403    67
   20:  408    77
   15:  793    93
   10:  941    92
-------------------
Total: 2597   362  Total Score = 2,776,902

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Comments:

Raw score breaks 21 years old 6th call area record by 5.5 %, will see if it
holds in log checking.  

I could have moved more multipliers, started it late and only did few, most
which actually worked out.  I was not sure if I was going to do it as full
time as I ended up doing (44 hrs) but 1st day was so great that I thought I
could do quite good score from my domestic contest oriented station.  Of
course then 2nd day was quite miserable with very slow going, but I just
plowed through it with
3 hrs nap during the slowest hours of night.  72 % of my Qs were during 1st
24 hrs.  160 and 75 were especially lousy during the weekend, and my
antennas on those bands are poor to work any DX. 

Mixed feeling about self-spotting.  Often times nothing seemed to happen
when I sent spot (especially after 10 mins had passed at same QRG, I suspect
those spots somehow got cleaned up as too repetitive if I was already
spotted by someone else or something else was going on).  Other times some
crowd showed up immediately after I sent spot.  It was kind of nice to get
something going faster at new QRG.

Most antennas are here are tuned for CW bands and I had lots of trip-offs
with my RF Kit amp and had to use tuner inside it to tune some antenna
combos to prevent trip-offs.  Then needed again retune if I changed
something like dropped 2nd direction antenna on same band.  It was all bit
annoying.  There actually is a away to tell that amplifier which antenna or
antenna combo is being used and tuner inside the amp can then have always
perfect setting for every antenna combo on every band but I have not
implemented it, main reason being that most of my operating is on CW
portions of bands.  But it is probably something I will address in future.
My old 87A tube amp did not have any of those issues but I also had to use
external tuner on it for 75 and 40.

I had a lot of ISI between 20 and 10 m bands so had to avoid simultaneous
operation on those bands.  It did not matter which radio was on 10 or 20,
but this problem only showed up with introduction of K4D here couple months
ago.  I
used K4D and K3 radios in this contest.    

Antennas used in this contest:
C31xr and 2 el M2 40 m linear loaded yagi on one tower.
5 el 15 m and 4 el 20 m OWA yagis designed by K6AM and 3 el M2 40 m linear
loaded yagi on other tower.
A3S on 33 ft mast.
2 inverted V collinear dipole array on 80 m.
160 m 1/4 wave top fed sloper force fed with tuner.
There is also fixed direction OWA monobanders aimed to main US direction on
each
20/15/10 but I rarely switched those on as we don't work US in this contest.

Speaking of it, why are there so many US stations answering in this DX
contest...  Maybe we should educate them somehow and get them all into NAQP
instead of this DX contest....

In this year's ARRL DX contests (both modes) I think it was 1st time I did
48 hrs contest almost full time from this home station which I have had
about 10 years now.  Station is built more for domestic contest
participation as I often travel anyway for CQ WW DX in fall.  It was good to
try but I'm not sure I want to do full 48 hrs DX contest effort from this
station again.  It just feels too slow on 2nd day and my station cannot get
to those deeper layers station masses in these DX contests.  I kind of
prefer to operate WPX contests or similar here with somewhat reduced time
(36 hrs) and also because we can get some points also for US stations worked
in that contest as well as in IARU contest.  But nevertheless it was
interesting experiment to try these big DX contests from home.

Tnx for Qs and 73 de Marko N5ZO


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