The weather man just said that tomorrow(Saturday) will be a good day to do things inside, so why don’t you make plans to operate in this contest. When the contest is over, then you can post your results here by adding a comment/reply to this posting for inclusion in the CTRI Champions competition.
DON’T FORGET… LOGS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY SATURDAY, 1 JUNE 2013
73 and good luck in the contest!!
Ken K3IU, Keeper of the Leaderboard
Yes, lousy wx conditions outside here in New England are conducive to some chair time inside in front of the radio. While band conditions are not the best (high K-index all weekend w/ minor geomagnetic storms) much DX is around. The best may be *outside* the contest as SV2ASP/A (Mount Athos – op. Monk Apollo) has been very active all weekend on 17m CW!
In the contest I’ve found YJ0, 2 VK6’s (Zone 29), 5W1, JW, D3 and PJ6 amongst others for new band DXCCs…hopefully propagation improves a bit for Sunday. Good luck in the mult hunt and let us know which was your best DX. 73 & good contesting, Bill W1WBB
Conditions were quite lousy up until Sunday afternoon, ironically. As Bill pointed out, the K level was pretty much at 4 all weekend. Signals were weak, watery. Overall 10 meters was pretty useless except for the usual PY and LU Q’s. But despite the bad conditions, 40 meters was surprisingly strong Saturday night and so was 80. But when you can’t work EU, you can always turn West and work stateside even if the Q is worth just one point! I put in sporadic time here between errands, family visits, cook outs.
Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend!
73
Jim KS1J
CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: KS1J
Operator(s): KS1J
Station: KS1J
Class: SO(A)AB LP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band QSOs
————
160: 0
80: 35
40: 211
20: 471
15: 172
10: 28
————
Total: 917 Prefixes = 568 Total Score = 1,500,088
Club: CT RI Contest Group
Only got to operate on and off for something under 12 hours, due to other commitments, and strictly search & pounce. SOAB all-band, assisted, high power TS.
Band QSO’s PFX
80 7 6
40 61 40
20 229 185
15 100 64
10 9 8
Total 406 303 298,455 points
Norm W1BYH
As others have said, conditions were not very good. This was definitely a contest for tall aluminum and high power and I found myself with “aluminum envy.” N1MM reports that my “Time On” was about 15 hours, which were 95% S&P. Tried CQing several times and I fell into the alligator category (big mouth, small ears) and for the most part could not copy the answering stations. Only club member I heard was W1AN on Sunday morning (I think).
Here’s the results of my effort…
Band QSOs Pts WPX 3.5 13 38 1 7 161 672 91 14 266 666 206 21 174 407 96 28 35 99 20 Total 649 1882 414 Score : 779,148As I expected, this was really lots of fun. I was able to put in about 25 hours. Since my antenna farm consisted of only a 40-m dipole and 80-m inverted vee, I added the TB/Wires to my category, less the tribander. On Saturday evening, I had a run of 79 stations in one hour on 40. That was really lots of fun. I ended the contest with a great last 30 – 40 minute run, again on 40. 15 was pretty good, except for the weak signals and generally noisy background. As Jim said, 10 meters was disappointing. I didn’t get to 1 million points, but I did crack 700 Q’s. Notice that Ken beat me by less than 100 points. I am certain that margin will increase when the Q-snatchers get finished with my log!
73, Mike, K1DM operating as AI1D – tough call on CW! Many repeats requested!
Mike,
You brought up an interesting point. The gap between your and Ken’s score is less than 100 points; you had almost 100 more Qs and about 50 more points than Ken did, who had 12 more prefixes than you.
One question this brings to mind, if we want to analyze scores in order to learn something we can apply later, is how many non-NA QSOs you each had on 40M and 80M. Those are worth 6 points each.
Another question is how much time was spent S&Ping vs. CQing. Ken says he spent about 95% of his time S&Ping, during which one can assume he was selecting for needed prefixes (as well as non-NA QSOs perhaps).
Maybe these questions don’t mean anything in and of themselves, but when you look at the difference in operating time, I think they become significant, especially for those members without a tribander. Some might say that I’m comparing apples and oranges here, but I’m not making any direct inferences, only suggesting that some strategies can be employed regardless of category. We’ve had these discussions before, so I thought I’d point out a concrete example.
These points may seem intuitive to those of us who are steeped in the minutiae of contesting, but to those who are less experienced there might be some lessons here that can help demonstrate the strategies that make for higher scores with less effort.
73,
Pat, NG1G
Here is a points per QSO per band comparison
VERY INTERESTING! Pat, you bring up some interesting points. I will look at my logs more carefully. I suspect that Ken’s S&P rates are significantly higher than my S&P rates. I have a tendency to go really slowly when tuning. But, unless my run rate is 60 or greater, I get bored just sitting there calling CQ, even though I can almost ALWAYS keep a higher rate running. It’s my ADHD personality, I guess.
But, there are certainly some things we can learn/remember by taking a closer look at just what was going on. Another issue would be who was on which bands when? Again, Ken probably picked bands more productively than I did. Since one of my objectives was to increase my country count on 10, 15, and 80, that might have effected my band choices. I also had some issues with the telnet connection. It would drop out randomly. And then I had no spots until I reconnected. A very annoying situation, brought on because I’m too cheap to pay for a better internet connection, and AT&T is not friendly out here in the sticks. If I wanted to spring for UVERSE, I would probably have a more reliable connection.
Some good material for analysis here. In the end, I don’t think I increased my country count anything. On 15, I am sitting at 99! ARGH
Mike, K1DM/(AI1D for this contest) – we’ll have to get K1ZF into the club so we can have that call to use
Not a full time effort. On and off operating times, but Foster contributed quite a bit on this one. Found signals often were mushy during this weekend of high K and A indexes.
Mike,
I understand exactly what you mean about country counts – I only need 9 more *confirmations* on 80M for 5BDXCC.
Before the contest I had thought about doing a single band effort but with my knee injury it actually makes it difficult to sit behind a computer for very long, so I scrapped the idea. The conditions helped make the decision easier.
Ken’s numbers comparing points per band (below) tell an expected tale. Ken, did you enter in the Assisted category?
As a little pistol op I’ve determined that for me, the Assisted category is the way to go when I enter CW contests that have it, and sometimes it’s best in RTTY contests as well.
73,
Pat, NG1G
Oh, yes… I was “assisted.” Knowing that I wasn’t gonna win any plaques, I just want to maximize the points that I contribute to the club, so… I run the bandmaps! Somewhat similar to “left click, right click, left click, right click” 🙂
73, Ken K3IU