[SECC] Claimed Score WAE CW K4BAI

[John Laney]

Hello all:

I put in 29.5 hours in WAE CW this weekend and had a lot of fun.  Last 
year, I put in about the same amount of time and made only 599 QSOs. 
Reviewing the log shows that band conditions were at least fair on 15 
meters and I made one QSO on 10.  This year, to my surprise, 15 was fair 
to good and I missed the scatter opening that N4PN found Sunday 
afternoon.  He worked 27 Europeans beaming toward Africa, but said that 
they were mostly in Germany.  Paul was at home in Macon using high power 
and a TH6.  I was using my TH6 plus a zepp for 40 and an inverted vee on 
80.  I did not use SO2R because the DX Doubler requires changing an 
internal connection in the box to go from NA to CT.  I leave it set up 
for NA since it covers more contests, but it does not cover WAE.

The WAE people this year (for the first time) require a Cabrillo format 
log entry (or their own special form of electronic log entry).  I didn't 
read this until the contest was going on.  So, at the end of the 
contest, I downloaded the newest version of CT, did the Ct 9 to CT 10 
conversion and copied the Cabrillo file.  I sent it in and got an 
acknowledgement that it looks OK to their Robot.  But, it doesn't look 
OK to me at all!  It is wild looking with information that seems 
incomplete on QTCs and a bunch of things that are symbols and not 
letters or numbers.  Incidentally, I also printed out the .all file to 
keep for QSL answering purposes and it appears to be messed up just like 
the Cabrillo file.  The basic QSO information is OK, but there are many 
papers interspersed with QTC information that appears to be meaningless 
to me.  The cabrillo file also seemed to have the QSO info OK.

One problem that CT10 corrected (that doesn't make any difference in 
Cabrillo format anyway) was the counting of multipliers.  I knew that 
CT9 hadn't counted MM/DL6MHW as a mult.  He was GM/s (Shetlands).  I 
tried to type in the callsign field MM/DL6MHW=GM/s, but the field isn't 
long enough.  Since I hadn't worked any other GM station, I tried 
MM/DL6MHW=GM, but for some reason that didn't work either.  Apparently 
CT9 thought this was a Maritime Mobile station and not a UK prefix for 
Scotland and CT10 got it right (almost).  CT10 counts it as Scotland, 
which is OK since it was the only GM station I worked anyway.

Conditions at the start Friday night were only OK on 20, but seemed 
quite good on 40.  The noise was low and most European stations running 
got me on the first or second call.  Eventually, I was able to run some 
Europeans by CQing, but the rate is never good for me on 40 with just a 
wire antenna and no receiving antennas.  I never heard any Eu station 
running above 3525 on 80 meters.  That isn't too unusual for August and 
I often make no Eu QSOs in this contest on 80.  I did move G3TXF and 
CT1ILT to 80 with no trouble at all.  This was near their sunrise.  I 
did try to move DL1IAO to 80 unsuccessfully.  This was too late.  It was 
about 90 minutes after sunrise in DL, but Stefan had a terrific signal 
on 40 at that hour.  I imagine Stefan must be a doctor by now.  He was 
just about to start medical school when Bill and I met him at WRTC in 
San Francisco in 1996.  He and Bill shared a room there, so I got the 
luxury of a private room.

20 meters stayed open to Europe Friday night until about 0715, when most 
of the Eu signals disappeared and I stopped getting answers to my CQs. 
I slept until 7 AM and, after breakfast, listened to 20.  Made a few 
QSOs there, but only the big guys were coming through.  Checked 15 and, 
to my surprise, found it open to Europe well before 12 UTC.  A little 
after 14 UTC, the rate dropped off to nothing and I could find noone 
else to call, so I went into the office for a few hours to catch up from 
the trip to Seattle last week.  Got back on for a few minutes around 
1615 UTC, but there were few signals from Eu on 15 or 20.  Worked a few 
stations in the MDC QSO Party.  Went out to lunch with XYL and son about 
1705 UTC.  When I returned, 15 was dead except for South Americans, but 
20 was beginning to open to Eu again.  Worked with increasingly good 
rates to Eu on 20 until had to QRT to get cleaned up to go out to some 
friends about 2230 UTC.

Returned about 0300 UTC.  Am sure I missed some good openings, 
particularly on 40.  Saturday night 40 and 80 were much noisier than on 
Friday night.  Never heard any Europeans on 80 and didn't try to get 
anyone to QSY.  Did work all the Europeans on 40 that were calling CQ 
loud enough to copy at all.  Got only a few answers to CQs from Europe. 
  The most difficult successful QSO on 40 was probably on Friday 
night--a very weak HB0/DJ9CB.  The 40 meter opening seemed shorter on 
Saturday night.  Maybe it was just the noise, but I suspect some were 
just tired and gone QRT.  Didn't hear much of a rise in activity when 
their sunrise arrived and signals didn't seem to stay in much after 
European sunrise.  However, 20 M was much better Saturday night than 
Friday.  Signals were good and the whole of Europe seemed to be coming 
in at once.  Again, the rate dropped to almost nothing and there were no 
new CQers to work in the General Class band, so QRT about 0730Z.  Easier 
to get off to sleep the second night.  Back up at 11Z, breakfast with 
Weesie, and checked the bands about 1130Z.  20 meters seemed almost 
dead.  Worked a couple of Eu stations and checked 15 M.  Surprisingly, 
it was open and the signals were stronger that at the same time on 
Saturday.  From that time until a lunch break about 17Z, 15 meters was 
jumping.  The band was crowded from 21025 (and below I am sure) to about 
21065.  N4PN and K4OGG were getting a lot of calls.  I had some good 
rates and picked up some new multipliers.  After lunch, 15 M continued 
good, while there were few Eu signals on 20.  This continued until about 
20 Z, when the rate dropped off.  There were still strong signals there. 
  I heard KC1XX asking Eu stations to QSY to 28010, but I couldn't hear 
XX or the Europeans on 10.  Mixed in a few MDC stations when I came 
across them.  The rate was pretty good for the rest of the afternoon on 
20.  Often it dries up for the last couple of hours, after you have 
worked practically everybody and the casual ops are getting tired and 
going to sleep.  But, it held up pretty well this year.

I was suprised by not getting a lot of Italian stations and only three 
QSOs from Greece.  These were not using the special Olympic prefixes. 
They are too long and confusing for contests, I guess.  The Italians are 
not as active on CW as on SSB, but I thought the number of casual 
contesters from Italy was down from what might otherwise have been 
expected, so it may be that conditions to southern Europe were not as 
good as to Northern, Western, and Central Europe.  Often the best 
signals, even on 15 meters, were from the UA3/4/6 stations.  Also HA and 
LZ stations were often strong.  Also many of the DLs were strong.  An 
interesting prefix was OE80Xxx (I forget the exact suffix.) 
Scandinavians are often hard to work in non-peak years, but the 
Scandinavians and Baltic areas seemed to have a lot of activity this 
time (except for Norway--didn't hear a single LA station).  I think the 
only multiplier that I heard, but did not work, was MM/DL6MHW on 15 M. 
When I heard him, the band was not favoring the Shetlands (far north UK) 
as his signal was very weak and he didn't hear me calling.  LX7I had a 
good signal on 40-15.  MU0FAL called on one band.  Worked only two GW 
stations (GW3KGV on two bands and GW3NJW on one).  Only one Portugal 
station, CT1ILT, but we was strong on all 4 bands.  No EA6.  No TK.  No 
9H.  No Greek islands.  No ZA.  No European Turkey (but TA3DD in Asia 
was strong).  There was a CU2 with a strong signal, but only heard in 
S&P.  Fortunately, he finally called me.

Apparently the place to be was D4B, but there were also big signals and 
big scores from Turkey.  VY2/KD4D had a good score from the VY2TT QTH. 
Jeff, VY2ZM was also active.  V31RZ, Rumen, was active at least on 40. 
I heard a lot of SA stations working Eu and heard some Eu working JA and 
ZL stations and VK8AV.  Sunday morning, there were a number of JA 
stations calling Europe on 20 and coming in very well here.

15 M was again open to Europe Monday morning as I worked US5QQF at 
1159Z.  Seemed no one else knew 15 was open, so I went to 20 and worked 
a loud JQ3 and then long path worked 3B8FG.  Isn't this the guy who 
never answers QSLs?  Don't guess I'll waste postage and another IRC on him.

Here are the band totals:

Band   QSOs  QTCs  Mults
80     2     2     2
40     131   131   25
20     444   442   42
15     305   305   34
10     0     0     0

ALL    882   880   103     414,070.     29.5 hours.

Be sure to put South East Contest Club on your entry log Cabrillo 
format.  Last year we had 7 logs submitted (for the CW, SSB, and RTTY 
WAE contests).  Already, we have exceeded our total club score from last 
year with only the CW scores.  So, when we add in SSB and RTTY, the club 
aggregate score should be quite nice.

If you enter, you will receive a quite handsome, slick booklet from the 
sponsor, DARC, about next July along with a certificate to the top so 
many scorers from each call area.  Unfortunately, they now issue the 
awards, not geographically, but by the callsign you use.  So, Don, you 
are classified with the New England stations.  Of course, you can avoid 
that result by signing KA1DWX/4.  I noticed that K8IA was signing K8IA/7 
(he lives in Arizona), which gave him a better shot at winning a 
certificate.  I had a discussion with the sponsors about this last year 
and suggested that it be by geography.  I offered to help figure out the 
proper call area for US entries but they rejected that suggestion and 
the offer.  They use call areas as multipliers too and they want it 
where the computer will do the work without anyone having to inject 
common sense into the equation.

Hope everyone got on and had a lot of fun.  I certainly did.

A nice surprise was working the 7P8DA DXpedition on 7041 khz CW Sunday 
morning about 0415Z.  I guess the contest activity chased Dave off 7005 
and gave a lowly General a chance to work him.

Have a good week.  Don't forget to register with K4NO to be on a NAQP 
SSB team ASAP.

73,


John, K4BAI.