CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2023
Call: OH5Z
Operator(s): N7JI OH1WZ OH4XX OH6KZP OH6XX OH7CW OH7WV UR8UQ
Station: OH5Z
Class: M/2 HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 260 15 64
80: 1017 28 103
40: 1610 36 135
20: 1839 39 141
15: 1934 39 148
10: 1123 36 142
------------------------------
Total: 7783 193 733 Total Score = 14,265,030
Club: Contest Club Finland
Comments:
Oh boy this was fun! After months of erecting antennas, fixing broken RX
antennas and their feedlines, setting up the station we were all good to go 9h
before the contest. That is a new record for us. We had nine operators confirmed
for the contest but unfortunately two of them had to drop off right before the
contest because of health issues. Therefore we were only 7 to man 5 operating
positions 48h. That meant long hours for everyone.
Contest started really well with 20m being open to NA for the first 2 hours.
Both 20m and 40m making 3 point QSOs we were really flying. Once the 20m died we
went to 80 and 160m for the rest of the night.
On Saturday morning we moved really early to 10m and 15m for JA's, BY's and
other stations in the East. We have always felt loud and have a bit of an
advantage compared to our competitors towards East due to having a good
downslope from the big towards towards JA and BY. This time wasn't any
different. We caught our rival SK3W in the morning, went by and never let then
catch us again.
Scott, N7JI, gave us a visit on his work trip to Finland on Saturday. After
giving him short briefing (most probably too short) how station works we gave
him an opportunity to operate with us. That gave a short extra break for some of
us which was really appreciated. Thank you for your visit Scott!
Sun played a big role again and conditions really dropped when Saturday went
ahead. Bright aurora was observed all around Finland. We didn't hear any JA or
other Eastern stations on the low bands. It was like having an RF blocking wall
between us and the East on low bands. We started falling back from our goal of
14M points. Although NA was quite ok on the high bands the lack of DX QSO's on
especially 40m started to show in the score development.
When we reached 5000 QSO's I made a Facebook update that we didn't have a
slightest chance for a new OH M/2 record. How wrong was I? We had a great 40m NA
run on Sunday morning. They just kept on coming from a real odd skew path since
we were beaming to SW instead of normal NW. Due to this 40m run we started to
close the gap against our goal. 80m and 160m conditions to West near our sunrise
wasn't anything spectacular. Got few multipliers on 160m but normal ones from
zones 8 and 9 were missing.
On Sunday morning we went again really early to high bands and got quite decent
number of JA's and BY's in the log. 40m DX path to East was still absent during
our midday so we decided to stay on high bands even though most of the QSO's
were just 1 pointers from EU.
At 15:30Z on Sunday someone dropped the lowbands curtain to East and we quickly
moved to 40m. One station was running DX's from East on 40m and another one NA
on 15m at the same time for an hour until the 40m run dried out and 40m QSY'd
back to 20m for NA run.
10m and 15m died really early on Sunday. 15m at around 18Z and 10m already 45
minutes before that. Due to that we were forced to work the rest of the contest
on 20-160m bands. Most of the time it was really slow on RUN stations but Inband
stations worked really hard in keeping the rate bit higher. The end was really
grinding but in the end we managed to pass our goal of 14M points and ended up
to 14.2M! For the first time ever 14M mark was exceeded in M/2 category from
OH.
Due to being a bit shorthanded, all of use had to sit long hours but no one was
complaining. We were really working hard to reach our goal. Really proud of all
of the guys.
Thank you for the QSO's everyone. We are really looking forward in working you
all again in coming contests.
73,
Juha OH6XX on behalf of OH5Z
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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