VE2TZT
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Posts: 280 | | Karma: 2
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Re:CQ 160M CW 2015 - 2015/01/25 18:49
Call: VA2EW
Class: Single Op HP QTH: QC Operating Time (hrs): 30H00
Summary: Total: QSOs = 1311 State/Prov = 59 Countries = 50 Total Score = 845,077
Club: Contest Group du Quebec
Very disappointing first night followed by a good second night. The QSO number seems correct taking into account the bad overall propagation but the DXCC is my worst ever.
The first night I was never able to reach the rates from previous years and my max hour was 93 qso`s. Few Eu stations and fewer multipliers. Don`t know if it is the propagation or in a way the lake of participants. Then I went to bed at 7H30 somewhat disappointed. The second night did not start better but with the hours the missing qso`s from previous night seemed to be slowly catched up. That was not the case with multipliers. In non assisted category, multipliers versus run is always the most difficult to balance. on my score board one mult is worth 12 average QSO`s which means 6 EU QSO. Then when the band opened wide to Europe during 3 hours like Victor has mentioned I was working EU at 70 qso/h and it is very hard to know that I am surely missing some mults. But am I able to find one every 6 minutes ? Usually the mults are coming by themselves and often I regret to have lost time for a DXCC mult when later I have several calls from that DXCC. The better example was that OA station with a huge and bad disciplined pile-up that I refused to participate in and who called me a few hours later.
Worst, if I do not permanently call , I will miss some multipliers from guys who will never run and that you will never find in S&P like VE5 guys.
So I try to listen on the second receiver at the same time as I listen my run. The counter part is that I cannot use diversity and I miss calls from some directions like this VK5 who sent me an email today to say he called me without success while he was receiving me S-5. At that time I was practicing double RX while running. Happily one VK3 had already called me 2 hours earlier.
In this permanent balance I think that I made a mistake this night, after 2 hours of Run with EU and filling some slow down I decided to S&P for mult. Perhaps with the tiredness, I did not see the time passing and I lost 30 minutes with only one QSO and no mult ! Bad decision... I may have lost the equivalent of 3 mults in lost QSO`s... That could cost me a place.
Additionnaly, I totally missed the opening to Asia and it is not because I did not supervised it.
Victor, do not try to compare the signals strengths : Now, since the last Stew Perry, I have my 2 elements phased array operational. I have no any test values because 3dB is very tight to compare but in RX it has some directivity while too much noisy for RX. The second element I have added is an inverted L with 16 X 25m radials same height than the T. They are 21m high and phased 90 degrees but I can easily change the phasing between 90 and 180. I can commute among omni and the two directions NE-SO.
I used it with success for contacting the EP6T expedition on 160m.
With this contest I have observed that except for multipliers actually I only use directivity 10% of the time because the position of QC between NA and EU. Perhaps a bidirectional 180 phasing should be the best.
It looks like running in non assisted, every year I am missing a new one 160m last year it was A6, this year it is HV. Congrats to you.
Thanks to callers and spotters
73`s
Gilles VE2TZT / VA2EW
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