I expected good conditions and already opened high bands. It was true, but only partially.
I had a lot of time to check the station settings on Friday. It was good to solve few minor problems. But it was bad, because every small change had influence to another one or more others, hi. But generally, station worked fine and was stable all the time.
I started on 40m, but just 3 QSOs during first 15 minutes… There was completely different world after QSY to 80m. Almost 2 hours of nice pileup, with peak of 371 QSO/hour. 40m was poor during first night. High bands was opened, but pileups was rare, except good afternoon on 15m on Saturday. But I was seriously tired, so I had to go to sleep too early on Saturday evening and missed NA opening on 40m. I hoped in better Sunday, but it was worse than day before. There was more valuable to S&P instead of SO2R (CQ + S&P on radio2).
One fact is starting to be considerably significant. It’s massive loss of stations, which are walking through the band. More and more stations are assisted, and are making S&P only by clicking to spots. The bands were closed often during my CQ. Then started to be opened suddenly. It was like kicking the door down. Rate jumped from 30-40 Q/H to 250-300 Q/H during 2-3 minutes. The trigger was always the cluster spot. No chance to make QSO without cluster spot. I heard a lot of askings for spotting the station. Now I know why.
I’m not fan of selfspotting, but I started to understand, why it starting to be accepted in more and more contests, especially SSB. It’s true, that CW and RTTY are the modes with tens of robots, which are producing plenty of spots of every station independently on category and 24/7. But SSB not (yet). So selfspotting looks like the only way how to increase the band activity back to „non RBN“ era. I think, that a lot of stations already dealt with this their own way…
The second problem is degrading of bands, especially 40m, by various strange signals and DQRM, not rarely strong and wide. I hope in solving it by our representatives.
Thanks to every active contester, see you in CW!
FINAL score: 2 606 450
Category: SO AB HP
Rank: WW #51 EU #19 OM #3
RAW score: 2 685 574
Category: SO AB HP
Rank: WW #53 EU #21 OM #3
Call: OM7K
Operator(s): OM7RU
Station: OM7RU
Class: SO AB HP
QTH: Dolna Micina
Operating Time (hrs): 42:11
Location: Northern Europe
Band QSOs Zones Countries
-------------------------------------------------
160: 167 6 35
80: 447 8 55
40: 868 28 90
20: 420 24 74
15: 587 26 82
10: 520 28 95
-------------------------------------------------
Total: 3009 120 431 Total Score 2,685,574
Club: OM0M Dozen Dashes Contest Club
Used equipments:
- Kenwood TS-590SG
- Yaesu FT-1000MP MarkV Field
- OM Power 3500A
- ACOM 2000A
- microHAMs: MK2R+, 2x Station Master, doubleTEN, ARCO
- 2x OM Power OM6BPF
- DXLog
Antennas:
- 160m: Half Sloper
- 80m: OptiBeam OB1-80 @34m
- AD-3446 @31m
- 2-el tribander @15m
- 40m: Inv V @20m
- 20m: Inv V @10m
- K9AY RX loops
73!
Riki, OM7RU/OM7K
www.tucek.sk/om7ru