A Thousand QSOs for the First Time

I arrived @DL2LSM late at Friday bringing my daughter. So she can spend some time with their grandparents while I do the contest. She did the nice picture of me operating. You can clearly see the SO2R setup, namely the two tranceiver, the SO2R controller, and the antenna tuner control box, respectively.

The contest committee introduced additional unlimited categories for all single operator classes. It allows for the use of cluster information. I decided to start in the ‘Single Operator Mixed Unlimited QRP’ category. Although the propagation hasn’t been very favoring I managed to do more than a thousand QSOs during a 24 hour contest.

Setting up the station took about three hours including to find a quick fix for the microphone switching problem described later and to setup the 40m delta loop. The latter played pretty well and I think the signals from US stations have been almost as good as on the dipole.

The band conditions haven’t been as good as they have been last year. Especially, 15m has been quite capricious. There hasn’t been any good opening to the Northern America. Signals have been quite low on Sunday. So, I managed to have more than 10% more QSO’s. However, the number of QSO points is less than last year. Additionally, the percentage of SSB QSO’s is less compared to last years effort. Nevertheless, it has been a lot of fun to operate the entire twenty four hours. All QSOs have been S/P. Didn’t call CQ myself since there was always somebody to work somewhere.

I would like to thank DL2LSM for hosting me again and getting the shack in order after the contest. Additionally, I would like to thank my family giving me the weekend off and allowing me to operate.

Conclusion: I’m pretty happy about the result and hope to repeat my last years win. However, competition is fierce and there are excellent operators out there.

Highlights:

• Managing to get KH7XX into the log. It seems that he becomes a ‘regular’ now. I learned later that it had been operated by N2NL. So, no wondering anymore. He is a great operator. However, KH2 is getting a bit more difficult to get into the log though.
• Breaking the pile up of 5V7MI both on 21 MHz as well as on 14 MHz. He is on a long time journey with his rainbow truck. The operating technique isn’t just contest style. I guess he has been adopting the African Life Style.

Low Points: 

• Learning that my microHam u2r station controller doesn’t switch the microphone to ‘Transceiver 1’ anymore. It is quite annoying. However, I just used another hand microphone with that transceiver. Nevertheless, the second problem with the system now. I have to send it in and hope they can and will repair it.
• Listening to LU4AA on 80m CW and not been able to make it into the log. It would have been a new one on 80m for me. They have been a solid 579 after my sunrise.

Outlook: In principle there is potential to work about twenty to thirty stations more when I wouldn’t have been so exhausted. Need to rest more the week before the contest, Hi. I suffered especially in the Sundays morning hours almost falling asleep in between QSOs in the chair. Had to catch some fresh air outside to get me going again.

Preliminary Result:

Call:  DK3WE
Class: Single Operator Unlimited All Band QRP
Rig:   K3 (5W) + K3 (5W)
Ant:   2x20m double zepp @13m, spider beam, 40m delta loop 
QTH:   @DL2SLM, JO61GH

Summary:

Total Score:  2654 * (95 + 188) = 751.082

Band   SSB    CW  ITU   HQ  Points    
-----------------------------------
 160     4    43    4   24      59 
  80    33    95    9   34     204
  40    26   126   13   33     356
  20   108   291   34   41    1167
  15    54   192   29   37     780
  10    17    31    6   19      88
-----------------------------------
TOTAL  242   778   95  188    2654 

Downloads:

• Log (submitted)