2004 ARRL November Sweepstakes (CW)
11/18/2004 |
W6YX
Sweepstakes - What a Contest!
This was my first ever Sweepstakes entry (I operated a token effort a few years ago at a friend's station, but never sent in a log.) It was a lot of fun using W6YX, the excellent station of the Stanford Amateur Radio Club! Made a clean sweep and 950 Qs, not bad for a non-contester.
I was happy that nothing blew up, and no computers crashed - this made all the setup work worthwhile. Conditions were great, except for the huge aurora Sunday evening. Also, my CW skills were greatly improved after the nadir they had reached at the time of the WPX CW contest. By the end of the SweepStakes CW, 30 wpm was not a problem for me.
Here are some observations from my newby point of view:
- some of the big guns refused to QRS for slower ops.
- Many stations sent 30 wpm during the aurora, impossible to copy due to multipath echoes. Aurora newbies!
- Pointing a spare antenna North or Northwest during the aurora helped reduce echoes on receive.
- Best DX on 75 meters: VE9DX QRP class in MAR. No problem on the 4-square. Uncopyable on the dipole. Wow! The new 4-square is working great!
- Lots of QRP stations called me. Many were well over S9 before the aurora started.
- On Saturday, 40 meters was open and workable to East Coast hours before sunset here on the West Coast.
- Packet was extremely useful for finding mults.
- very bursty QSO rates, probably due to spotting networks.
- Due to packet spots being quantized to 100 Hz increments, it paid to call CQ on 100 Hz boundaries so that the packet pouncers would be on freq when they answered.
- Since W6YX was so loud, eventually many mults answered our CQ. However, DXing skills still count in contests. Getting the sweep early removes the pressure to waste time chasing mults. I did try chasing some mults Saturday evening. This strategy proved to be correct since the predicted arrival of 3 CMEs made life difficult for mult-chasers on Sunday.
- K2NNY in particular was very difficult to work until his pileup subsided. I just kept checking back on him every so often with the B VFO. Worked him on 75 meters. It was the only NNY station heard here. At least he was CQing and not S&P!
- Next time I will have my CW skills built up some more to reduce fill requests.
- A few hours after the contest ended, in the middle of the huge aurora with a K-index of 8+, 75 meters short path to Europe opened up with some 20 dB over 9 signals! Our dipole was about 5 dB better than the 4-square, indicating strong high-angle propagation. The 4-square showed almost identical signals from NE and SE, with a slight preference for SE. Big-time skew path! I worked OE6MBG, a couple Bulgarians, a German, and S50A. Victor Zk1CG told me that he heard them too, but 100 watts and a dipole wasn't enough to break through the wall of West Coast stations. Victor was 10 over 9, and gave W6YX a 20 over 9 report. This was all during a very strong aurora that was reportedly visible in Reno, Nevada. No flutter, just some moderate QSB and a high noise level at about S8-9 (not lightning static, just a continuous hissing.)
See you in the SSB Sweeps!
John -- KJ9U
This was my first ever Sweepstakes entry (I operated a token effort a few years ago at a friend's station, but never sent in a log.) It was a lot of fun using W6YX, the excellent station of the Stanford Amateur Radio Club! Made a clean sweep and 950 Qs, not bad for a non-contester.
I was happy that nothing blew up, and no computers crashed - this made all the setup work worthwhile. Conditions were great, except for the huge aurora Sunday evening. Also, my CW skills were greatly improved after the nadir they had reached at the time of the WPX CW contest. By the end of the SweepStakes CW, 30 wpm was not a problem for me.
Here are some observations from my newby point of view:
- some of the big guns refused to QRS for slower ops.
- Many stations sent 30 wpm during the aurora, impossible to copy due to multipath echoes. Aurora newbies!
- Pointing a spare antenna North or Northwest during the aurora helped reduce echoes on receive.
- Best DX on 75 meters: VE9DX QRP class in MAR. No problem on the 4-square. Uncopyable on the dipole. Wow! The new 4-square is working great!
- Lots of QRP stations called me. Many were well over S9 before the aurora started.
- On Saturday, 40 meters was open and workable to East Coast hours before sunset here on the West Coast.
- Packet was extremely useful for finding mults.
- very bursty QSO rates, probably due to spotting networks.
- Due to packet spots being quantized to 100 Hz increments, it paid to call CQ on 100 Hz boundaries so that the packet pouncers would be on freq when they answered.
- Since W6YX was so loud, eventually many mults answered our CQ. However, DXing skills still count in contests. Getting the sweep early removes the pressure to waste time chasing mults. I did try chasing some mults Saturday evening. This strategy proved to be correct since the predicted arrival of 3 CMEs made life difficult for mult-chasers on Sunday.
- K2NNY in particular was very difficult to work until his pileup subsided. I just kept checking back on him every so often with the B VFO. Worked him on 75 meters. It was the only NNY station heard here. At least he was CQing and not S&P!
- Next time I will have my CW skills built up some more to reduce fill requests.
- A few hours after the contest ended, in the middle of the huge aurora with a K-index of 8+, 75 meters short path to Europe opened up with some 20 dB over 9 signals! Our dipole was about 5 dB better than the 4-square, indicating strong high-angle propagation. The 4-square showed almost identical signals from NE and SE, with a slight preference for SE. Big-time skew path! I worked OE6MBG, a couple Bulgarians, a German, and S50A. Victor Zk1CG told me that he heard them too, but 100 watts and a dipole wasn't enough to break through the wall of West Coast stations. Victor was 10 over 9, and gave W6YX a 20 over 9 report. This was all during a very strong aurora that was reportedly visible in Reno, Nevada. No flutter, just some moderate QSB and a high noise level at about S8-9 (not lightning static, just a continuous hissing.)
See you in the SSB Sweeps!
John -- KJ9U
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