2006 ARRL DX CW Contest (N5KO, K5ZD)
ARRL DX Contest, CW Call: K5ZD Operator(s): K5ZD, N5KO Class: M/S HP Operating Time (hrs): 48 Summary: Band QSOs Mults ------------------- 160: 96 54 80: 639 85 40: 1120 103 20: 1331 103 15: 750 103 10: 36 22 ------------------- Total: 3972 470 Total Score = 5,600,520 Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
- The great thing about radio contests is that no two are ever the same!
- Famous YCCC quote, “There’s no meters like 10 meters.” But, what happens if there’s no 10 meters?!
Trey, N5KO, was in Boston on business and accepted the invitation to do a multi-single effort. Trey did most of the operating and we had a great time doing a “tag-team” effort. I.e., one guy operated until he was tired and then tag, the other op was “it”!
Conditions were excellent here in ‘New Europe’. We spent most of our time running or CQing because the 6 band change per hour restriction limited the ability to chase QSOs or multipliers on the less active bands. There were many hours we would save our band changes and then do all 6 in the last 10 minutes.
Note to ARRL CAC: Please change rule to allow 10 band changes per hour!
160 – Conditions were very good. HA5JI was consistently the loudest European. Didn’t seem to be much activity as we got very few answers to CQs.
80 – Good both nights, although we probably didn’t spend enough time there on Friday night. Made up for it on Sat night. Happy to work JA2ZJW on Sunday morning. Very nice signals from Europe during the last hour. Heard HS0ZDJ on LP very strong during that time, but he wasn’t hearing anyone.
40 – Open all the time it seemed. Amazing how far past European sunrise we could still get answers to CQs. At one point on Sunday morning I was working Europe and had a very loud HS0ZDJ call on LP (from the southwest)!
20 – Opened right on schedule both days with excellent European signals. Usually the band with the highest multiplier, 20 was lagging 40 and 15 until the last hour of the contest!
15 – Went to 15 early on Sat morning because couldn’t believe the band was so open, or that it would be so good the second day. It ended up being better than expected both days. Even had several VU and HS0 call in on Sunday afternoon. No JA on Fri or Sat, but the big JA stations had good signals on Sun right to the end of the contest.
80m antenna had broken from the wind and fallen across the top 15m beam so most of our big rate on Sat morning was with a single 5-ele at 33 feet! Fixed the problem about 15z (man it was cold outside!).
10 – Ugh. 2 QSOs on Sat (CU2A and LR2F). Band opened better on Sunday, but the Caribbean and Central America never got very loud so it took time to work through each pileup. Causing some difficult band change decisions since 20 was still runnable to Europe at the time.
We had one equipment failure. The 40m beam became intermittent on receive Sunday morning. Seemed to be OK on transmit, but there is a loose connection or broken coax connector shield out there somewhere. Way tooooo cold to figure it out now!
With 4 hours to go, we were hoping to break 4000 QSOs. Unfortunately, the mental wheels came off (or we ran out of people to work) and we limped home with some pretty slow hours. The 40m beam problem caused us not to stay committed to 40m as much as we probably should have, but it’s hard to keep calling CQ when you aren’t getting any answers!
Not as many bad signals this year as in the past, but still too many. Especially from some very large (and loud) Eastern European stations. Only a few lid frequency fights.
I don’t normally get to use Packet so it was interesting to see how it helped and hurt the score. Since we could only get one operator at the radio at a time (this is an SO2R station – not multi-op), we relied on packet a lot to be the “second op”. With all the busted calls, sometimes it was dangerous as the station we found was not the call that was spotted. Amazing to see how fast one spot could instantly bring hundreds of frenzied contesters to one frequency!
Even so, we almost always could find more QSOs (and even new mults) by tuning around ourselves. The worst case was on Sunday when several spots blew our call sign (KH7D and K5ZB). The KH7D resulted in lots of W/VE calling us (many of them were stations that should have been able to copy our CW and known better…) and K5ZB bringing a round of European dupes.
Thanks to all the DX stations that spend time to give us so much fun!
Special thanks to P40W, 8P9PA, and the other DX stations who signed their call on a regular basis…
Recorded the entire contest and will have it available on my website as soon as I can edit the files into manageable sizes.
The Numbers
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm D1-0000Z --+-- 10/9 122/34 --+-- --+-- --+-- 132/43 132/43 D1-0100Z - 29/11 44/6 - - - 73/17 205/60 D1-0200Z - 68/12 22/2 - - - 90/14 295/74 D1-0300Z 2/2 72/22 - - - - 74/24 369/98 D1-0400Z 36/28 5/0 17/3 3/3 - - 61/34 430/132 D1-0500Z 13/8 2/1 80/3 - - - 95/12 525/144 D1-0600Z 8/3 41/4 22/10 - - - 71/17 596/161 D1-0700Z - 1/1 104/4 - - - 105/5 701/166 D1-0800Z 1/1 2/2 62/4 --+-- --+-- --+-- 65/7 766/173 D1-0900Z - 1/1 59/3 35/14 - - 95/18 861/191 D1-1000Z - - - 155/18 - - 155/18 1016/209 D1-1100Z - - 3/3 189/17 - - 192/20 1208/229 D1-1200Z - - - 37/1 141/36 - 178/37 1386/266 D1-1300Z - - - - 164/11 - 164/11 1550/277 D1-1400Z - - - - 115/5 1/1 116/6 1666/283 D1-1500Z - - - 26/2 54/18 - 80/20 1746/303 D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 128/1 3/3 --+-- 131/4 1877/307 D1-1700Z - - - 81/8 3/3 - 84/11 1961/318 D1-1800Z - - - 60/8 1/1 1/1 62/10 2023/328 D1-1900Z - - 30/1 19/10 17/6 - 66/17 2089/345 D1-2000Z - - 59/1 3/2 - - 62/3 2151/348 D1-2100Z - - 86/1 2/2 1/1 - 89/4 2240/352 D1-2200Z - 1/1 74/3 2/2 - - 77/6 2317/358 D1-2300Z - 61/0 30/2 2/2 - - 93/4 2410/362 D2-0000Z 1/1 57/6 9/9 --+-- --+-- --+-- 67/16 2477/378 D2-0100Z 5/1 33/3 3/2 - - - 41/6 2518/384 D2-0200Z 15/1 6/0 25/0 - - - 46/1 2564/385 D2-0300Z - 37/1 - 1/1 - - 38/2 2602/387 D2-0400Z 9/3 20/1 15/2 - - - 44/6 2646/393 D2-0500Z 2/2 58/4 13/0 - - - 73/6 2719/399 D2-0600Z 2/2 64/1 1/1 - - - 67/4 2786/403 D2-0700Z - 12/0 69/1 - - - 81/1 2867/404 D2-0800Z --+-- 1/1 56/0 --+-- --+-- --+-- 57/1 2924/405 D2-0900Z 1/1 - 57/2 - - - 58/3 2982/408 D2-1000Z 1/1 4/2 21/3 - - - 26/6 3008/414 D2-1100Z - - 4/1 103/1 - - 107/2 3115/416 D2-1200Z - 1/1 1/1 124/4 1/1 - 127/7 3242/423 D2-1300Z - - - 21/0 101/2 - 122/2 3364/425 D2-1400Z - - - - 87/6 - 87/6 3451/431 D2-1500Z - - - 45/1 29/3 1/1 75/5 3526/436 D2-1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 86/1 --+-- 1/0 87/1 3613/437 D2-1700Z - - - 54/1 3/3 14/9 71/13 3684/450 D2-1800Z - - - 35/0 3/0 14/8 52/8 3736/458 D2-1900Z - - 5/0 48/1 2/2 3/2 58/5 3794/463 D2-2000Z - - 4/0 35/1 1/0 1/0 41/1 3835/464 D2-2100Z - - 12/1 11/0 13/2 - 36/3 3871/467 D2-2200Z - - 11/0 25/1 11/0 - 47/1 3918/468 D2-2300Z - 53/1 - 1/1 - - 54/2 3972/470 Total: 96/54 639/85 1120/103 1331/103 750/103 36/22
The best 60-minute rate was 194/hour from 1104 to 1203
The best 30-minute rate was 202/hour from 1127 to 1156
The best 10-minute rate was 216/hour from 1127 to 1136
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
EU 65 584 1033 1195 650 1 3528 88.8
AF 1 6 13 15 18 1 54 1.4
AS 1 8 25 76 25 0 135 3.4
NA 23 26 26 25 29 16 145 3.7
SA 6 12 15 14 19 18 84 2.1
OC 0 3 8 6 9 0 26 0.7
“Only” 88% Europe… most worked countries were
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
DL 14 82 163 202 102 563
OK 2 59 75 79 55 270
G 4 49 89 91 21 254
UA 1 44 68 96 44 253
I 3 21 69 72 66 231
Multi-band QSO’s
—————-
1 bands 1486
2 bands 422
3 bands 269
4 bands 152
5 bands 25
6 bands 17
(During the contest I would have thought we had many more multi-band QSOs as it seemed many stations were on 3 or 4 bands, but guess not!)
The following stations were worked on 6 bands:
V31PP CU2A J7OJ VP2MVX TI5N TO9A WP2Z 8P9PA P49Y VP9/W6PH PJ4R P40W PJ2T HI3TEJ HQ9H FG/N0YY V26G