We shouldn’t hear too many complaints about lousy propagation for this contest. Should be some big scores!
Please report your results here for inclusion in the CTRI Champions competition. Don’t forget that you log must be submitted to CQWW “no later than 2359 UTC November 1, 2013 for SSB.” (Quote from rules).
73,
Ken K3IU
Keeper of the CTRI Champions Leaderboard
Greetings everyone,
I sure hope you didn’t miss all the fun on TEN METERS this weekend. It was simply amazing.
I operated on Saturday at W1AN’s station with the rest of the crew. Then, I did some operating
on Saturday evening on 75-m to see if I could boost my country count. Sunday afternoon I decided
to work on my 10-m country count and was not disappointed. With about half an hour to go in the
contest, I had between 9,000 and 10,000 points, so I decided to switch to 20-m which had the
most multipliers available. I spend about 20 minutes and kicked up my score to almost 18,000 points.
I thought that was a good indication of how the points can add up at the end of the contest.
So, here’s the run-down of my exercise for this weekend. John or Pat will report on the W1DX
side of the weekend.
BAND QSO's Points Zones Countries 80 34 94 8 23 20 17 42 14 15 10 28 72 12 14 Totals: 79 208 34 52 Score: 17,888All was search and pounce, single operated assisted high power. I will figure out my new country counts later this week.
73, Mike, K1DM
I’m sure John, W1AN will post his report on our operation from W1DX, but suffice it to say that the bands were hopping this weekend! Propagation prior to the contest had been excellent so I was very hopeful that it would remain that way, although there was some solar activity that I thought might impact us. It has been a very long time since I heard 10M open like it was this weekend. Wall-to-wall signals all the way up to 28.800, from early morning til around 2400z – 0100z. We worked stations from all over, including several nice runs into JA-land. If I remember, more than 1,000 of our QSOs were on 10M alone.
15M was excellent as well, which is where we spent much of the time on the second station. The 5-over5 stack on 15 worked very well, allowing us to establish some good runs and making S&P almost like running – almost every call was answered first time. It’s nice to be loud.
The 4-el 20M antenna performed very well indeed. After fixing a bad connection on the stack match box at 80′, John put that antenna in our toolbox and boy, did it work. It was nice to have that antenna in combination with the tri-banders so you could switch back and forth between them to cover more area. It sure saves time when checking propagation to other parts of the world.
We didn’t spend much time on the low bands, mostly because we were doing so well on the high bands. I did manage to pick up 50 Qs or so on 40M in the last hour and a half just to make up for the low Q count. I think we finished with 150 or so on that band. Alternating between simplex and split operation kept the rate up. 80M was a chore and I think we had around 20 Qs on 160M. There was considerable local noise on that band so John spent little time there.
Overall a very fun contest. One thing I noticed was that it seems that spotting is getting worse, with probably 30-40% of all calls being bad. It was obvious that someone was deliberately spotting bad calls on someone else’s (well-known) call sign, so I used N1MM’s blacklist feature to prevent me from seeing those spots. It was a good example of why we should never trust spots explicitly.
Thanks to John for opening his station, and thanks to Nancy for feeding me 🙂
73,
Pat, NG1G
Call: W1XX
Operator: W1XX
Station: W1XX
Class: SOSB/40 HP
QTH: RI
Operating Time (hrs): 11.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
————————————–
40: 514 24 78
————————————–
Total: 514 24 78
Score = 137,394
Club: CTRI Contest Gtroup
Comments:
Did a semi-serious single-band 40 meter operation to test out the re-constituted 40 meter 2-element Yagi. It worked very well….first call on every search-n-pounce. But the band is a mess on phone. Even with a very good signal, it was impossible to carve out a run frequency in the desirable 7125 – 7200 segment. Even if you tried , you could not hear any weak ones that may be coming back. After working all the big EU stations in S & P mode, the solution was to call CQ above 7200…7203 + or – was the best…amongst the broadcast carriers…and listen split around 7020 – 7040. That worked great. The EU DX could hear me and I could hear them. With Red Sox in the World Series (plus we had somewhat unexpected guests) I missed some critical time in the evening…plus I sort of threw in the towel at 1:30 AM Sunday…so I missed a bunch of AF and SA mults. I did the SR opening on Saturday though which was productive to the South Pacific and Japan….with E51AAR working by the #s the best as the first 1-lander to get through. I spent Sunday afternoon at W1DX with some fun operating on 10 meters with John and Pat…marveling at the neat work that John has put into the M2 operation at his station….considerably different from the “classic” operation sat home….can you say “fish in a barrel”? Thanks for having me. Hope you all had fun. 73!! — John, W1XX
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: K1SD
Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: Rhode Island
Operating Time (hrs): 32
Band QSOs Zones Countries
——————————
160:
80: 33 13 23
40: 126 16 57
20: 242 29 88
15: 310 29 96
10: 521 28 107
——————————
Total: 1232 115 371
Total Score = 1,711,206
Club: CT RI Contest Group
The K1SD station:
10/15/20 Bencher SkyHawk @ 70ft / Cushcraft A4S @ 42ft / SM03 Stackmatch
40/80 Inverted V’s
Elecraft K3
The station is finally at a fairly functional point. This was my first effort from home in quite a while. Also my first phone test for some time too. I said that I would never operate a serious phone effort without getting a DVP working again. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting a sound card to work with me, the K3, and N1MM. I considered trying to find a motherboard with and ISA slot and putting my old K1EA DVP in it. I recently got a SignaLink USB sound card just for that. It works well for the DVP and for RTTY decode as well. I made a lot of S&P QSOs without uttering a word.
The high bands were fun; I should have stayed on 10 a lot longer. Running low power assisted with resonant antennas really allowed some quick point and shoot activity. No tune-up required. Jumping from one band to the next was real easy. It was neat to be running, spot a mult on a different band, jump to it, make the Q, and jump back to the run freq in a flash. That kind of fun compensated somewhat for not having the Titan on-line and having to suffer on 40 and 80 at low power. Having the A4 fixed on Europe in a stack with the SkyHawk let me switch directions and focus in a flash.
Packet spots are always suspect, but Sunday afternoon they were especially bad. Noticed a lot of bogus calls spotted similar to the actual call. Saw it a lot. Over driven AFSK RTTY signals are bad, but nothing like the European wall of high power over-driven speech processors on 20 and 40. Some signals were barely decipherable. My head and ears still hurt.
Bottom line: The station worked well. Had lots of fun. As Arnold said when asked which great composed he’d like to be: “I’ll be Bach”
73 James K1SD
Good conditions for sure. (I hope the table stays formatted). Ten was unexpectedly great. I can’t remember when I have heard so many JA’s. They were also strong on 15. 40 was also good. I had fun but no 160 and no 80 antenna so the score pretty much stayed the same as last year. More signals than last year but the flip side was it was tough to find a spot to run so more time was spent in S&P than I wanted. Unfortunately QRN picked up on Sunday so working the weak ones became a chore. One thing I really noticed is that the old FT-1000MP can’t perform well with all the close spaced strong signals. Stations could hear me but I needed multiple repeats and gaps in the interference to pick them up.
Jim KS1J
Jim, great score. I heard you a couple of times during the weekend; W1DX too. I don’t know how much blame you can give the FT-1000MP. I have the 1.8 KHz filter in my K3 and try as I might, I just couldn’t pull some of those close packed signals out either. I felt I needed a couple more knobs to twist to try and get it. 73 James K1SD
Remember,
You must submit your scores this week. Deadline is approaching quickly. Mike, K1DM
KS1J’s comment re the “ole Mexico Papa” Yaesu radio requires some response. I also have a Yaesu FT-1000MP which I got on E-Bay several years ago. First thing I did was put in a 400 Hz Inrad CW filter on the main VHF and the less expensive Collins mechanical 500 Hz CW filter on the auxiliary VFO. I also put in the Inrad roofing filter…which should make some significant difference on crowded SSB signals….though of course I can’t make an A vs. B comparison…with or without the roofing filter.
There were 10 to the 8th complaints in this contest re wide signals, splatter, etc. See the 3830 comments such as by K5ZD. I know 40 was absolute torture between 7125 and 7200.
I know that even at my limited (and unfamiliar) time at W1DX on 10 meters with a K3, I was driving Pat crazy with my “in house” derogatory comments about the QR-Mexico. Perhaps I should have diddled the knobs a bit, but I had not a clue…so I left the radio as John had set it. The point is that even with the much acclaimed K3, picking out the weak ones even on 10 was not easy. W3EP (SOSB/10) had some pertinent 3830 comments.
I operate most every morning at SR on 3793 looking for DX …with 3 stations who have new Yaesu 5000s. Bearing in mind the moving SR, I usually hear better or at least on a par with these guys for South Pacific DX.
So, is it time to deep six the ole Mexico Papa? Other comments on this potential thread would be welcomed.
73, John, W1XX
This one turned out to be more of a casual operation, but thanks to those who could make it to operate. Mike KB1RFJ got a good taste. We did work all zones, which was I think a first here. The antennas all performed well and the only technical problem was a dirty T/R relay in the station 1 amplifier returning to RX. Signals were so strong that maybe I was the only one to notice? I was watching my rate on 10M. Saw it shoot up over 340/Hr for short times. My 60 minute best was 167/hour. Some over 7/minute.
Scores showing on the 3830 reflector are fabulous. There is much more competition from
super station now for M/2.
Great job guys. Looks like we are well on the way to meet our aggregate club score of 70,000,000.
73,
John, W1AN
Band QSOs Pts ZN Cty
14 10 30 6 8
21 30 89 8 18
28 41 119 16 26
Total 81 238 30 52
Score: 19,516 Category: SOAB LP(A) SSB
Just went DXing/PFX hunting in this one with very limited time. Far East openings on 10m & 15m, esp. Saturday PM, were amazing. With very high solar flux/SSN and quiet geomag indices this contest weekend at (2nd) solar peak I expect this event to be one for the record books! 73, Bill W1WBB