Bands looked fine before the contest, but VOACAP predictions were not optimistic about 10m condition.
Finally, not much works was needed just before the contest, everything worked fine during the last check on Friday. I set my goals checking last year’s logs : 2k QSOs, 1k mults, 6M points.
I hoped for 20m NA opening at the beginning and it worked. For 40 minutes. Then stopped. But 40m worked fine, but no huge pileup.
20m was in good shape on Saturday afternoon after break 1. 10m only for a few mults. Interesting: I wasn’t able to have a solid 15m run, only a few mults. So I decided to run CQ mainly on 20m and 40m, other bands for mults and 3/6 points QSOs. Second night still fairly good on 20m to all directions, short paths, long paths… again till 0040 UTC. 40m still open to NA, so OK. A nice morning opening to NA on 20m, but 15m still weak, 10m dead.
20m mainly of EU QSOs after Sunday break 2. 15m still not working, the most R2 QSOs were on 40m due to double points.
I didn’t want to be short on mults, so I preferred mults hunting on R2 instead of dual CQ. I saw that it worked fine, so I didn’t change this tactic.
It was good to see that I was able to be in the game the whole 36 hours. Even though I spent often microdreams between sending QSO number and receiving QSO number, hi.
Finally: all goals were achieved and I was still in touch with similarly equipped stations, despite 15m loss…
The funniest moment of the game: I tried to break the SM***M pileup, but I still did not hear my callsign from him due to neverending pileup. Boy started to send something else than contest traffic. When pileup went away, I discovered, that boy was lecturing me, why I didn’t respond to his answer. It took 2 minutes – instead of making the 10 seconds QSO, hi.
Thanks to all contesters, it was good fun!
FINAL score: x xxx xxx
Category: SO AB HP
Rank: WW #xx EU #xx OM #x
RAW score: 6 106 289
Category: SO AB HP
Rank: WW #57 EU #27 OM #1
Call: OM7K
Operator(s): OM7RU
Station: OM7RU
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: JN98OQ
Operating Time (hrs): 36:00
Location : Europe
Summary:
Band QSOs
----------------------------------------------------
160: 31
80: 181
40: 780
20: 972
15: 75
10: 17
----------------------------------------------------
Total: 2056 Prefixes: 1057 Total Score:6,106,289
Club: Dozen Dashes Contest Club
Used equipments:
Yaesu FTDX101D
Kenwood TS-590SG
OM Power 3500A
ACOM 2000A
microHAMs: MK2R+, 2x Station Master, doubleTEN, ARCO
2x OM Power OM6BPF
DXLog
Antennas:
160m: Half Sloper @31,5m
80m: OptiBeam OB1-80 @34m
AD-3446 @31m
Cushcraft A4S @6,5m, fixed NA
40m: Inv V @20m
5 circle phased vertical RX array
73!
Riki, OM7RU/OM7K
www.tucek.sk/om7ru