[SECC] 160m contest observations/ lessons learned

[n4uk@mindspring.com]

        After looking at the data and giving some thought to what went on over the weekend I have come up with a list of tactical decisions we made at N4UK during the weekend that may have hurt us. I'll also list improvements I'll be making in time for the CQWW 160.

    1- The whole first day of the contest was spent CQing on 1813.13.
This turned out to be an excellent frequency and we were able to run stations and never had any serious challenges by anyone seeking to improve his frequency real estate. On Saturday we made a decision to CQ somewhere between 1830-1840 to increase our chances of snagging some more EU QSOs.We wound up on 1837.5. This was a BIG mistake. We got sandwiched between W3GH and another loud Northeaster and was eventually challenged by another big gun who might have had this frequency the night before and who felt that it was his manifest destiny to use it Saturday night too. Our rate suffered, we could hardly go after spots since a few seconds of silence would result in more frequency battles.
 
2- We did not take as much time as we probably should have to search for DX.It shows in our measly 14 countries. (CM,HI,V4,VP5,XE,ZF,PY0F,YV,PY,DL,GM,OK,ON,VK)

3-Probably should have CQed throughout the day on Saturday and till the bitter end on Sunday. Even just a total of 20-30 more qsos would have put us ahead of some of the other multis.

4- I need to improve my NE rx antenna situation. I hope to remedy this with a 1,000 footer if my neighbor cooperates.I am good to go in all directions except to the NE where it matters most for mults. Maybe a thousand footer towards the West might help too.

5- Need to lay down 14 more radials to get to 60 on the vertical. May or may not help much but I know it won't hurt us!
    We'll see how mcuh better we do in the CQ160 with the improvements. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day!
  I'd be curious to know from the others how much DX called you vs. how much you called. We had KP4,KH6, a pair of PY, and DL call us. The rest we called. Did we miss that much DX by not looking for it???
  73, Ken N4UK
OPs-aa4nn,aa4s,n4uk   Go SeCC!


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