[WWYC] ON5ZO CQWW CW SOAB LP

Franki ON5ZO on5zo at telenet.be
Mon Nov 29 03:38:47 EST 2004


>  CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
>
> Call: ON5ZO
> Operator(s): ON5ZO
> Station: ON5ZO
>
> Class: SOAB LP
> Operating Time (hrs): 40
>
> Summary:
> Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
> ------------------------------
>  160:  162     7       43
>   80:  439    10       54
>   40:  266    13       60
>   20:  432    20       64
>   15:  252    23       61
>   10:   78    20       36
> ------------------------------
> Total: 1629    93      318  Total Score = 1,095,726


Stuff used:
TS-850 with Microham band decoders and antenna switching and N1MMLogger.
Higher HF: KLM KT34XA
40m: short loaded vertical dipole (ON4BAI design)
80m: inverted V
80m+160m: inverted L (full size for 80m) with a couple of long radials fed with 
SG-230 SmartTuner.

Observations:
- I exceeded my target of 1500 QSOs and 1Meg points. Hooray, but this is where the 
cheering ends. I could have done better.

- Because my station is still a work in progress and the crank up tower has only been 
here for a couple of weeks, I need to finish a lot of work. I could not go for the 
full height of about 18 to 20m because I didn't have the time to prepare the low band 
wires to be suspended that high. Due to that, beam and low band wires were at about 
12m. So this is the first place for improvement.
Nevertheless, it was my very first contest with a beam, and being called on 15m with 
stuff that I badly needed for DXCC is a thrill! I'm talking real DX, things I hav 
NEVER heard on my wire dipole before, let alone being called by them!

- My reference for 80m+40m is WW CW 2003. I had some real high rate hours then on 
40m+80m with loud USA station, 3 point land  ;o)   Not this year. Either 40m was in 
bad shape, or the tower and antennas have destroyed my otherwise killer 40m antenna. 
This weekend, I could not get any run going on these bands, so I need to check that: 
was it conDX or was it the antenna? In general, I am a bit low on mults but I 
squeezed out all I could. Massive shortage of 3 point QSOs. With my 2004 rates and 
numbers for 40+80m, and the 2003 number of 3 point QSOs, the score would see a 
tremendous boost. On the other hand, 160m was a black hole before, now I snagged 50 
mults there and 162 QSOs. I had hoped for 50 QSOs and 20 mults.

- 40hrs... I need sleep, I have troubles sitting out 24h contests, but 48h is 
impossible. I woke up on Friday at 04.30 local and couldn't sleep, so the day before 
the contest started early. Saturday at 1800z, after more than 36hrs awake, I went 
down to have a snack and stretch my legs but I ended up on the couch watching a new 
Simpsons episode. Next thing I know is that it's 00.00utc. Yep, I fell asleep and 
didn't wake up... I was home alone and the cat didn't alert me, and I missed the new 
episode after all.

- UNASSISTED! Yes, truely: NO DX cluster used. I am an assisted operator, but 
"assisted" means there is NO distinction in power. QRP, 100W, 1500W, all the same for 
assisted ops. This put me in ON4UN's league in 2003 and I wanted to avoid that this 
time (did someone hear John at all this weekend?). I needed to hunt for all the 
multipliers, which is a pain. I do not have the station nor the location ("callsign 
gain") to sit on a QRG, run at 150/h and let the mults come to me. I have a feeling I 
missed a lot of mults though I scanned the bands from bottom to (almost) top and 
filled the bandmaps myself.
I would rather see the assisted class split up by power too. ARRL DX has this on the 
website score database, but in the end the results for "asssisted" are all thrown 
together also when it comes to power. Either bend the rules or buy an amp. I'd rather 
keep it at 100W. I think this might be a topic for discussion.

73,
Franki ON5ZO 




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