12/06/2002 | K5UTD K5UTD, the Comet Amateur Radio Club at the University of Texas at Dallas was manned during this year's SS by Oliver, W5/DK1CM and Justin, K5AEA. We entered the contest with hopes of breaking 1500 Qs, and we almost got there.

Starting the test, we missed grabbing a calling frequeny on 10 below 28.500, but since there were stations calling all the way to 28.8, we grabbed a frequency closer to the 500 mark and ran for the first hours of the contest. Even though we were a strong signal on the band, the yagi hurt us a bit; as we would call to the northeast the W6's would push us around, and as we would call to the northwest the Northeasterners tried to take over our frequency. We finally setelled on some combination of turning the beam every few call when we didnt have a pileup. After we milked 10M and 15M for all they were worth, we S&P on 20M a bit, not too worried about grabbing the sweep but hoping to get a calling frequency on one of the low bands, since we couldnt find one on 20M.

40M proved the place to call, and heading into the late evening hours we were well on the way to 600. After taking advantage of our 40M rotatable dipole at 100ft, we tried to work on 80M a bit for some of the missing sections. Our dipoles, which were hung the week prior to CQWW Phone were oriented toward Japan and Europe, and unfortunately left a huge hole in the far northern US. With noise at S9 I closed shop at 1AM still working over 60/hr on 80M. Oli and I had decided early in the eveing that I would work till 1am CST while he went home and got some sleep, and he would fire it back up at 7AM for our 6 hours off. This strategy proved to be detrimental.

When I made it back to the test around noon, Oli was working on 1000 and holding good rates. He had earned the mug in the first hour of sunday morning, easily grabbing KP3, AK, and KH6 for the sweep. By 2PM, I was back at the helm; giving out my first ever SS serials over 1k felt really good, and people always seemed anxious to grab the next number. By 7PM however, the test was all but dead for K5UTD. I think that I worked just over 50 Qs in the last two hours of the test, finding only 3 to 4 new calls on a band at each change. However, I did get to give out serials over 1360, just over 100 Qs shy of our goal.

It was great to hear all of the stations with recent checks, and was even better to write over 15 school stations into the log. We ran as "S" ourselves, sometimes confusing ops who didnt seem familiar with the class.

We are waiting anxiously for the results to see who the champ of the school clubs turns out to be. Stanford, W6YX, ran Multi and did a great job. The last time I heard them they were well on their way to 2k. Thanks for all of the spots guys, we tried to return the favor when we heard you!

Our final tabs were 1350+ Qs x 2 x the sweep = 210,000+

73 to all and best of luck to all! K5UTD will be back next year and looking to beat W1YK's school club record of 222,000 points.

For more information about the Comet Amateur Radio Club at UTD, please have a look at our webpage at http://ham.utdallas.edu

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls more than 13,000 students. The school's freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university's Web site at http://www.utdallas.edu. -- K5AEA