[TOEC] CQ WPX SJ2W

[SM3WMV Mikael]

Hojsan!

Det blev en rolig och lyckad helg. Lite dåligt med aktivitet från SM vad jag 
hörde, körde inte många av er :-( Allt slitande med att bygga elektronik 
payed off, har aldrig varit så bekvämt att köra radio någongång tidigare 
måste jag säga!

Tusentals stack till Lars, SM2HWG och fru Cindy för servicen!

Jag ids inte översätta det här så ni får stå ut med att läsa det på 
engelska!

                   CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: SJ2W
Operator(s): SM3WMV
Station: SM2HWG

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Sika
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
Band  QSOs
------------
  160:   12
   80:  269
   40:  524
   20: 1375
   15:  363
   10:   11
------------
Total: 2554  Prefixes = 835  Total Score = 4,473,095

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

First off, thanks to SM2HWG for letting me use his station and his wife 
Cindy
for keeping me with food, ice cream, coffee etc during the contest. There
should maybe be a category for this aswell? SOAB assisted but not cluster
assisted.

I have been building electronics for this big station during most of the 
spring
and now it felt like it has really payed off. I was invited to do this 
contest
from SM2HWG in the beginning of April and accepted the invitation. When I 
the
week before the contest got a cold I was a bit worried and was lying in bed
most of the days prior to the contest. On Thursday though I felt kinda good 
and
the cold was totally gone on Friday.

When I arrived at the station I had a few things to do, first thing was the
install the driver unit (for antenna switches) on the band decoder for the 
2nd
radio. When that was done I fixed some with the amps and ended up going to 
bed
at around 20:00z and actually fell asleep!

I had a lot of technical problems during the contest and most of them 
involved
the amps. I ended up running the last 8 hours on the 2nd radio since the amp 
on
radio #1 gave up. I also had problems with the amp on 15/10m so I used the 
2nd
radio on those bands aswell. A bit confusing when you're used to have the 
left
radio as "mult radio" and then start to run on it.

Before the contest I had set a few goals.
X - Beat SM SOAB HP record
X - Over 2500 qsos
X - Over 800 mults
X - Stay "close" to 7S2E M/S effort (they are 1km away)
X - Stay "close" to fellow WWYCers IZ3EYZ (IR4X) and DJ1YFK (@DJ6ZM)

I knew I was going to lose on 40M and maybe 15m towards these two lads. This
far north I have no chance on 40M since the band closes very early towards 
US.
We never have total darkness here but greyline for some time. This greyline
together with darkness/greyline in the US exist for approx 1.5 hour I 
belive,
that gives me a huge handicap compared to guys further south who can run 6
ptsers like crazy. When I saw DJ1YFK result this confirmed my thoughts, he
averaged a lot more on 40 and also almost twice as many qsos. I was hoping 
to
make up for this on 20m towards US but that didn't work. The conditions 
where
there for sure but activity seemed very low from both US and Japan.

7S2E (SM2DMUs station) is about 1km away from SM2HWG and in the direction 
south
for them. This messed things up a bit when I was beaming JA and they were
beaming south. So for all of you calling on 40 and 80m and I was acting as a
LID it was probably because I was switching between a horisontal and 
vertical
antenna depending on the interference :-) On 40 I txed most of the time on 
the
yagi and when EU called listened on a FD-4, imagine that antenna came in 
use!

Operatorwise I did the contest quite okay I belive. I was not used to the
FT1000Ds and it took a while before I figured everything out, so the SO2R
suffered during the first part of Saturday but picked up later. Off times 
could
be discussed but the lack of experience at this time of the year was the 
reason
for that. I haven't worked a WPX CW since 1999 because of exams and that 
time I
was a rookie and didn't know much of propagations at all. That time 1.7 meg 
so I
think I have improved a bit :-)

How about the goals?
X - Beat SM SOAB HP record
X - Over 2500 qsos
X - Over 800 mults
X - Stay "close" to 7S2E M/S effort (they are 1km away)
X - Stay "close" to fellow WWYCers Matt IZ3EYZ (IR4X) and Fabian DJ1YFK
(@DJ6ZM)

I Managed to stay quite close to DJ1YFK and IR4X. They both beat me quite a 
lot
in points but that was expected. I was between them both in mults and qsos 
so
overall I feel I have succeded with that goal. I managed to stay not too far
behind 7S2E team. I sure did break the other goals so overall it was a
successfull weekend. I expect to get this record crushed though during the 
next
solar peak, hopefully it will be me doing it!

Station description:
160M: 35m high vertical
80M: 4 Square + FD-4
40M: 4el mono (fullsize) @53m + FD-4
20M: 6/6el + 4el mono + FD-4
15M: 6/6el + 4el mono + FD-4
10M: 6/6/6el + 4el mono + FD-4

Rigs: 2xFT1000D

More info -> http://sm2hwg.sm3wmv.com

Again big thanks to SM2HWG with wife and everybody who called me! Hopefully
I'll be doing a lot more contests from Lars superb station!

//Mike (SM3WMV // SJ3A // SM3W)