[SCCC] IARU N7VM SOAB-CW-LP
Bill Ralston
william.t.ralston at gmail.com
Sun Jul 13 15:40:43 EDT 2025
IARU HF World Championship - 2025
Call: N7VM
Operator(s): N7VM
Station: N7VM
Class: SOABCW LP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 24
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 16 6 0
80: 75 9 1
40: 399 18 9
20: 428 29 28
15: 140 16 10
10: 29 8 0
-------------------------------------
Total: 1087 0 86 48 Total Score = 441,262
Club: Southern California Contest Club
Comments:
Obviously propagation was a lot better last year... this year left me
wishing I
was running high power! I knew going in that the flux/SSN was the lowest
we've
seen in years. High bands were really disappointing in daylight (OK, all
the
bands were slow in daylight) which is where you need to be when running low
power. In part, summer noise (solar panels, air conditioners, etc.) on the
high
bands is really bad here. Things got better after sunset(too bad there is so
little dark for the northern hemisphere in July!) but it was mostly 20
and 40 from here (I may have missed some 15m openings as openings were
short).
I also didn't have some of the local noise issues on 80/160 I've had in
other
years (nor weird over the air wideband interference from Asia). If
not for the low band activity from Asia at the end, I'd probably have gone
to
bed rather than stick it out. Did have several bouts of fast QSB during
daylight
where S9+ callers disappeared into the noise for the exchange. Yet, in
spite of
the frustration of so many stations not hearing me call, there were those
moments
that keep me coming back: rare mults answering my CQ, getting through a huge
pileup to Africa, etc. Big surprise was 160m...after zero Q's last year and
only one zone in the previous couple years, I set a personal best of 9
zones with just a
low dipole. Thanks for the Q's and see you next year!!
Station info:
Rigs: 2x Elecraft K3+P3 with Microham u2R SO2R controller
Logger: N1MM logger (because I'm too lazy to migrate to DXLog)
Antennas (more is better):
Tower1: rotatable C31XR (7L10m, 4L15m, 3L 20m) at 70 feet, trap vee
80m/160m at 65 feet
Tower 2: rotatable 40m dipole at 60 feet, 80m vertical
Tower 3: fixed 204BA (4L20m) at 35 feet pointed 310 degrees
House roof: rotatable C3 (2L ea 10/15/20m) at 35 feet
Garage roof: fixed A3 (3L on 10/15; don't use 20) at 25' pointed 310
degrees
10m vertical (surprisingly useful)
Multiplexers on all multi-band antennas
Homebrew stack matches on 15m and 20m to allow beaming EU+Asia
simultaneously
Dunestar filters (on their last legs as I've blown one different
(fortunately) band filter on each
de N7VM Bill
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