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73,
Ken K3IU – Keeper of the Leaderboard
Small effort here with 5.6 hours BIC. Worked W1DX and W1WBB and heard KS1J once.
Put in about 9 hours. I tried mixed for the first time in eons. Seemed that there was more activity on CW than phone. EU was open for a few hours each morning. More on Saturday. Surprisingly once I turned the antenna W-SW I didn’t hear a ton of US signals. Lots of QSB and I guess that was to be expected. Once late afternoon rolled around, the band completely dropped. After 3:30 or 4:00, there wasn’t much to be heard!
ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: KS1J
Operator(s): KS1J
Station: KS1J
Class: SO Mixed Unlimited LP
QTH: RI
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
——————-
CW: 379 90
SSB: 55 39
——————-
Total: 434 129 Total Score = 209,754
Club: CT RI Contest Group
Comments:
At the suggestion of Bill W1WBB we ran a multi-single HP operation. This was the first here for a single band. It worked out well, but learned we need to fine tune the hand off between the 1st and 2nd transmitters to do short runs of multipliers. You can only have one Tx signal on at a time.
Conditions are definitely on the down slide. But considering we had fair daytime openings, all was well. We weren’t discouraged by the sometime slow rates. QSOs dropped drastically after sundown.
Zones worked are interesting. Some 14 and 15. Very Little 16. Not one JA. We were able to snag a rare VE8 in NWT and several Zone 31. Activity from XE was high. So far SA operators have some pretty impressive scores. Missed SD, DC, KY, MS, WV, MB, NU and many XE. There’s a chance we can stay in the top 5 or 10 in our USA category. Good to have fellow CTRI members here to share the fun..
QSOs QSOs QSOs Zone 12-12 12-13 Tot Accum -------------------------------------- 1 2 2 4 4 2 1 0 1 5 3 81 123 204 209 4 116 93 209 418 5 149 57 206 624 6 11 9 20 644 7 4 1 5 649 8 13 8 21 670 9 4 8 12 682 10 2 1 3 685 11 7 27 34 719 12 5 2 7 726 13 8 21 29 755 14 52 13 65 820 15 37 38 75 895 16 0 3 3 898 20 9 10 19 917 30 2 3 5 922 31 5 1 6 928 32 3 3 6 934 33 1 1 2 936 38 5 1 6 942 39 1 1 2 944 --------------------------------------- Total 518 426 944 94473, John W1AN
Call: W1XX
Op: W1XX
Station: W1XX
Class: SO Mixed HP non-assisted
Time: ~2 hrs
Mode Qs Mults
CW 33 17
SSB 49 19
———————
Totals 82 36 Score = 8280
Club: CTRI Contest Group
Comments:
…just diddling at home. Operated at W1DX multi.
KA1VMG 10M
SOLP SSB
Q’S 86
POINTS 7,912
**2015 December ARRL 10m Contest @ W1DX – Recap**
MANY THANKS again to John and Nancy for hosting the team — as always, we were *very well* taken care of!!
This is one of my favorite contests, primarily when we are on the *upside* of the solar cycle. It appears band conditions for ARRL 10m ‘test this year were quite similar to 2012, but not as good as peak years 2011, 2013, & 2014 within this solar cycle. The previous Cycle 23 had numbers like this year way back in 2003…some time ago!
Still, the solar flux/sunspots perked up from the previous few weeks and we did have openings to Europe both days of the contest, though short in duration and limited in area. The chart above tells the (somewhat sad?) story of contacts to Eu Zones 14, 15, 16 & 20. Just 98 Eu QSOs on Day 1 (No Russia/Ukraine Z-16). And only 64 Eu on Day 2 (very few Western Eu but 3 Ukraine) for just 162 total Eu contacts (few if any in Scandinavia all weekend) and none into the Middle East, Zone 21. Disappointing overall [Eu: 17% of all QSOs], but not surprising based on solar condx. On the other hand, we maxed out on available South Americans, logging 85 total, with 70 QSOs to PY, LU & CE alone, and signals from mid-Sunday afternoon on from there were loud and lasted until over one hour past our sunset which was really great. Very good activity from Mexico this year was a highlight too — 20 XE’s worked with many as new multipliers.
We operated “old school” (no SO2R or any hardware lockout [which could have enabled close to simultaneous operations in each mode]) and coordinated verbally (“Hey John – your turn now. GO!”) between operating positions when we changed mode. Stn/seat #1 used the 5 el (on 10m) M2 KT36XA Tribander @ 72′ (crank-up tower) while stn/seat #2 used the 3 el CL33 Tribander @ 97′ (distant tower). My experience during the weekend was that the lower antenna with 5 el was the most effective much of the time to most areas, except to the more distant areas such as VK/ZL and Africa Zones 38/39. Operating Note: While beaming (and transmitting!) South, the two towers’ antennas were in close alignment causing the other position’s K3 rig to automatically engage the attenuator, with corresponding rig display message “HIGH SIGNAL” present! The AL-811 amps were kept at under 1 KW output throughout the contest to minimize this interaction while helping serve amplifier longevity.
With rules mandating only ONE transmitted signal from the station at any one time, our strategy was to run often from one position on CW (worth double the points), then grab missing CW mults from the “Available Mults/QSOs” window at that same position; then switch to the 2nd operator at the other position and CQ again on SSB, then later click on new Phone mults as run rate slowed — and repeat. We probably should have run some more on both modes in hindsight but we were very effective in maximizing needed mults by contest end.
There was significant competition in the Multi-Op HP category this year, esp. in W1-land it turns out! Super station KC1XX in NH (7/7/7/7 el stack rotatable on one tower alone!), K1WHS in ME (5/5/5 el from 70′), N2KW @ K1TTT in MA (5/5/5/5/5 el from 120′) and AA1JD-MA (4/5el stack @ 90/45′ and 1300′ ASL) will make things quite challenging in the final rankings. We may have to settle for high score in CT as M/O HP. Guess that many around here were thinking alike — this may be the last good run in this contest for quite a few years.
No hardware glitches were encountered at the station. With the N1MM+ Logger software, we still need to figure out how to assign and save CW (& voice) macros per each individual op. as well as how to save the specific operator-selected Logger window positions designed by each op. while ensuring that the windows/positions are exactly restored especially when swapping operating positions/computers. Also, an apparent software coding glitch for our version of N1MM+ prevented us from ever knowing how many new mults were available to us in either mode. Zeroes appeared in those areas for the duration of the contest — a frustrating situation that was never resolved.
So, bottom-line… I was very glad we made the team effort to participate. It was certainly fun and a great learning experience operating on a single band in the Multi-Op category! It may well be a decade passes before we have these kind of results in the ARRL 10m contest again.
TNX to our FB W1DX team for a great job…73! Bill W1WBB