ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: W0SD
Operator(s): W0SD
Station: W0SD
Class: SO SSB HP
QTH: SD
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW:
SSB: 998 53
-------------------
Total: 998 53 Total Score = 105,788
Club:
Comments:
First my apologies to those I could not hear and thanks for trying and to those
I was able to work thank you! I had the lowest noise ever for this contest.
The power line company did some work this summer and the high 5 element just
below 200 feet looks beyond the power line and is very quiet listening. It was
the second year for the high antenna and I will have to say it was always best
except for a short period on Sporadic E on Saturday morning to the SE it was
down just slightly but it was quieter so I usually ended up listening on it
anyway. Of course many times I had them in difffent directions and found
myself wishing the second one was also just below 200 feet instead of just over
100 feet. Up here in the frozen northland I have found after listening for over
45 years you don't get to high. Contrary to popular opinion here higher is
virtually always best and it is most noticeable on 10 meters than any band
again contrary to conventional wisdom but it is definitely what happens here. I
think with all the land mass to cross and being this far north is why it is that
way.
I was prepared for a tough go and thought maybe as bad as 600 q's total but it
was not near that bad. I though until Saturday afternoon this is going to not
be bad. Yes tough work but always something going on and then if you look at
my rate chart you see about 2 hours late Saturday afternoon it just closed
down. WOW! Just no ionization anyplace. I experienced this only a couple of
times before in the past. To me it is just amazing how quickly sporadic e can
disappear and develop. I just don't see how that can happen so fast. Suddenly
I started to hear a little band noise on Saturday late afternoon and worked a
few stations and in 10 minutes it is "rocking". I thought I had seen the worst
but "NO" On Sunday at 1941z it died, "DEAD"! I think I worked 12 stations the
rest of the contest and I pressed as hard as I could for those 4 hours and 15
minutes. Now that is a drought with the kind of scatter signal I can put out
but propation rules, no iononization, no contacts!!!
The best DX on Saturday was South Africa, arm chair and we had a short chat as
not much was happening. On Sunday it was the Faulkland Is. VP8 and better to
SA. The big dissapointment was no VK/ZL, the first year I have not worked
several. I thought I could maintain the string through the bottom but it did
not happen. So far the Africa string is holding, two last year and down to one
this year. This is not a small thing to do this far north. Just live here all
your life with good antennas and you will realize we are at a disadvantage to
those east and south. I will say those west and northwest on 10 meters have it
worse IMHO during this low part of the cycle on 10 meters.
I thought I did awesome on state/Canada multipliers but in looking at the
results nothing real special which amazes me. Only 12 DX which really from
this location in comparision to the better DX propagation from east and south I
compared very well much to my surprise. I worked everything but OR, ND(I don't
thing they were on), DE, DC and only MA in W1 land. I thought that was VERY
GOOD but I guess where I fell down was no Canada except VE3. No KH6 for the
first time ever and of course no AK. Probably those with similiar or better
multiplier totals have more DX than they indicated and complained about the
lack of DX as they are not used to so low totals. I wish the break down showed
DX multiplers separately. We are used to the low DX total here as it is always
a struggle for DX and we do better under poor dx conditions as we are
competitive on stateside/Canada. Our only constant thorn is ND being close and
low activity as well as VE4 same story.
I noticed after a meteor burst I would sometimes have some enhancement on the
weak sporadic e propagation for maybe 10 to 15 seconds after the burn. I am
used to this on VHF but I will have to say I noticed it the most ever on 10
meters this year. Probably as so many of my contacts were with people who were
horribly weak. Just a side note I realize many of your are severly handicaped
by what you can have for antennas and some chose to run QRP but it amazes me
that I can not remember stuggling to copy a mobile anytime during the low part
of the cycle. I am not sure why but I sure find that interesting. For those
of you without VHF Meteor scatter experience you need to use phonetics and BE
QUICK!!! It is great to see a lot of casual contest operating in there with
people working at it. Most of you are using phonetics, my congratulations.
If you are not you need to start doing that. You just can not expect people to
be able to copy wbXvet, etc. or even short calls with out phonetics.
The two things different this year from last year when I won the HP, Single op
Phone is obviously less sporadic E but also the sporadic E was more sporadic
when it happend and I was not able to get the high per hour rates very long. I
don't every remember more than 3 calling at once and that only happened a couple
of times. Lsst year at times I was fortunate to pull out one letter from the
pileup. It may not be that the sporadic e was different but it might be less
people on although some of the TX stations reported fantastic rates which means
big pileups and I never had that this year and I did last year. I guess there
was a third thing different than last year which I just eluded to and that is
activity was way down as a lot of people did not operate much and probably just
got on when they heard a lot of activity and did not operate the other times.
KQ6ES mentions not being able to get my attention with 100 watts and a
tri-bander at 20 feet. I am sure there were a lot of people who called who I
never heard and quite a number I could hear a whisper but maybe one or no
letters/words and then just for a few moments because of meteor enhancement,
etc. I use 7/8 inch heliax and 5 elements and it was quiet for noise on
receive but often there is slatter. I have to think with KQ6ES it was splatter
that was covering him. There were an above average number of "terrible Audio"
and "Splatter" signals this year. It is tough with the band moving around as
suddenly you can find someone calling CQ on the frequency you had been on all
day or calling CQ 1 khz away. Anyway the bottom line is I am going to out
transmit those with lower power. I can make up a lot by good receiving
conditions but not all of it, just to many db from 100 watts or less to the
legal limit. I realize it is frustrating to not be heard!!! Don't give up
right away as often the splatter goes away and then I can copy you.
One always asks if one could of done better? Usually I say yes but this year I
say no. I have 4 beams and the receive noise was very low, everything worked
flawlessly, was on before the band opened until after it closed. I felt I did
as good as I could when the bands were open, worked hard on the multipliers but
just no more to get so maybe I could of gotten 10 more QSO's and one or two
mulitpliers somehow but I don't know how so I am at peace with a great effort
and as K5TR said last year sometimes it comes down to who gets the sporadic E
in these low years and even high years of the cycle so my hat is off to TX a
great radio location for contests like this one, and some great hardware and
operators. Texas is a great place to be if you are from the USA or Canada
during this part of the cycle when European multipliers are not a factor. Most
years I feel like I could of done better. Maybe a second antenna at 200 foot
would of helped but this year it really would not of. I am looking forward
that in a couple of more years there should be some F2 scatter. I worked all
the 48 states and most of Canada on scatter two years ago. That is great fun
and the QRM is not bad at all. Below are all the breakdowns which I find of
great interest and I wish some of you with big scores would paste them in for
us to look at.
____________________________________________
ARRL 10-Meter Contest
CALL USED___W0SD____________ ARRL SECTION or COUNTRY____________________
CALL OF OPERATOR IF DIFFERENT FROM CALL
USED____________________________________
CHECK ONE:
Single Operator License Class 1996 QSO points*
____ Phone & CW ____ Novice
__x__ Phone only ____ Technician x 53 Multipliers
____ CW only ____ Other
= 105788 Claimed score
_____ Multioperator
*Count 2 points per phone QSO, 4 points per CW QSO
and 8 points per US Novice/Technician CW QSO.
If multioperator, show calls of all operators,
loggers___________________________________________
105788 Claimed Score 998 QSOs 53 Multipliers
Hrs of Op
MULTIPLIER LIST
Worked NAM PHONE:
MA NY NJ MD PA AL FL GA KY NC SC TN VA AR LA MS
NM OK TX CA AZ ID MT NV UT WA WY MI OH WV IL IN
WI CO IA KS MN MO NE SD ON
DX PHONE:
CE CX HH HI KP2 KP4 LU PY TI VP8 XE ZS
QSO/Sec+Dx by hour and band
Hour 10M CW 10M PHO Total Cumm OffTime
D1-0000Z --+-- 65/12 65/12 65/12
D1-0100Z - 53/8 53/8 118/20
D1-0200Z - 48/2 48/2 166/22
D1-0300Z - 39/0 39/0 205/22
D1-0400Z - 25/1 25/1 230/23
D1-0500Z - 2/0 2/0 232/23 39
D1-0600Z - - 0/0 232/23 60
D1-0700Z - - 0/0 232/23 60
D1-0800Z --+-- --+-- 0/0 232/23 60
D1-0900Z - - 0/0 232/23 60
D1-1000Z - - 0/0 232/23 60
D1-1100Z - - 0/0 232/23 60
D1-1200Z - - 0/0 232/23 60
D1-1300Z - 2/1 2/1 234/24 51
D1-1400Z - 11/4 11/4 245/28
D1-1500Z - 26/2 26/2 271/30
D1-1600Z --+-- 34/10 34/10 305/40
D1-1700Z - 16/1 16/1 321/41
D1-1800Z - 35/5 35/5 356/46
D1-1900Z - 8/0 8/0 364/46
D1-2000Z - 4/1 4/1 368/47
D1-2100Z - 9/0 9/0 377/47
D1-2200Z - 5/1 5/1 382/48
D1-2300Z - 72/0 72/0 454/48
D2-0000Z --+-- 71/0 71/0 525/48
D2-0100Z - 96/0 96/0 621/48
D2-0200Z - 43/0 43/0 664/48
D2-0300Z - 48/0 48/0 712/48
D2-0400Z - 20/0 20/0 732/48
D2-0500Z - 2/0 2/0 734/48 45
D2-0600Z - - 0/0 734/48 60
D2-0700Z - - 0/0 734/48 60
D2-0800Z --+-- --+-- 0/0 734/48 60
D2-0900Z - - 0/0 734/48 60
D2-1000Z - - 0/0 734/48 60
D2-1100Z - - 0/0 734/48 60
D2-1200Z - - 0/0 734/48 60
D2-1300Z - 1/0 1/0 735/48 46
D2-1400Z - 10/1 10/1 745/49
D2-1500Z - 35/2 35/2 780/51
D2-1600Z --+-- 63/0 63/0 843/51
D2-1700Z - 72/0 72/0 915/51
D2-1800Z - 48/1 48/1 963/52
D2-1900Z - 23/0 23/0 986/52
D2-2000Z - 3/1 3/1 989/53
D2-2100Z - 3/0 3/0 992/53
D2-2200Z - 4/0 4/0 996/53
D2-2300Z - 2/0 2/0 998/53
Total: 0/0 998/53
10M CW 10M PHO Total
CE 2 2
CX 4 4
HH 1 1
HI 1 1
K 942 942
KP2 1 1
KP4 1 1
LU 20 20
PY 13 13
TI 1 1
VE 7 7
VP8 1 1
XE 3 3
ZS 1 1
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
______________________________________________
3830 mailing list
3830@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/3830
|