2002 ARRL 10 Meter Contest
12/30/2002 |
DL0LD
ARRL 2002 10m Contest
DL0LD op K5NZ Station DL3YEH Detmold, Germany
Joey, W5BAK and myself met Maik, DL3YEH, while he was doing a exchange work program for college in Houston a few years ago. Since moving back home, Maik has wanted us to come for a visit together. Airfare was right so we decided to make the trip.
Maik took us to Berlin for a long weekend when we arrived and that is a whole other story!
I first want to thank Maik and Uta for their great hospitality and to Maiks parents Bernd and Karin for taking us into their home and treating us like family for a week!
Since the 10m test worked into our schedule I wanted to try to operate the contest. Joey and Maik werent too interested in a multi-op so they told me to do a CW only if I felt like playing.
The set up for the 10m test was a Fritzel FB-33 @ 60ft , Icom 746 and about 500 watts.
Thanks to the Detmold chapter of DARC for allowing me to use the club callsign DL0LD for the weekend.
Here are some of the interesting things I noticed operating from northern DL.
With only 8 hours of sunlight the band opens late and closes early from this QTH.
I started tuning the band at 0600z which is 0700 from my QTH. Nothing so I went to have a snack and came back at 0644 to find a booming JY9NX. He gives me #258. Not another signal on the band. Then a booming A61AJ with #4. Ok now some Russian buzz saws, more on that later, are coming through so I start picking them off.
Im watching my greyline map closely for clues to propagation, looking for a JA run beaming 28d as we are both deep into our greyline. It just never happens. I work a few JAs but they are weak and watery. I suppose they were too deep into darkness already for me to get anything going. Maik confirmed this and said in summer months the JA run is a good one but not in winter. I do work a few station further down the greyline that are still in daylight. VR2, ZL, VK.
Ok getting light and I am expecting a super run of European stations. It just never happens. I guess the fact that many of these countries are no further than from my home QTH to Austin and the skip is just too long. There are very loud Russians but not the depth of weak ones I expected. Strange. I was left to mostly S&P hard with a few 40-50 an hour runs until sunlight made it to the USA.
Ahh the Russians! I have never in my life heard so many interesting signals. You think some of those sound bad from the US Try being in their first skip zone. Buzzing, clicking, hacking, ghost signals, 20kc wide, I wish I could have taped the contest to allow you to enjoy some of this with me. It was really funny, I would be laughing out loud and Joey and Maik would come in to see what was so funny! Out of the MANY treats I enjoyed, I will share the top 2 with you. Im S&Ping and find a UA3, call a few times, nothing. I move on up and find him again. Then again, and again I finally hear the person he is working so I know I have found his true signal and work him. I found 6 ghost signals for this guy and they were all over S9. Sweet! I have a nice run freq at 28.024, clear and am able to pull out those ether signals. All of a sudden I have what I think are CBers on my freq. Damn the luck, but wait.. I tune some and it becomes clear that it is RA3 calling CQ Contest on phone. Nice! A spurious signal all the way down from the phone band!
Ok , moving on. I make my first US QSO at 11:45 with W1GF still in darkness. And things pick up from there. I do note that there is in fact an east coast advantage into Europe. Im not sure many of you realized that. : ) When it really became clear was when I worked a mobile in NY and one in FL that were louder than the strongest W5 I worked the whole contest. But thats life. The good rate hours to the US for me were a small window of about 2.5 hours but I made hay during those hours. 1400 and 1500 were my 2 high rate hours but only at 80 and 88 when I had expected 100+ to occur.
Speaking of my W5 friends, it was great to work so many of them! I know you always want to know how loud you were so here are the standouts. W5KFT was always the loudest . Stacks do make a difference I guess I will have to admit! NX5M was a close second, also with stacked arrays. Of course many of you I worked were not CQing so I didnt run across you over and over to make a comparison during different states of band openings. One stand out is my QRP buddy KG5U. Dale was S 5-9 several times running QRP and a tribander, so go figure! Nice job Dale!
I did work some interesting mults on strange paths that I yet dont understand. The standout was DU3NXE @ 12:46z on Sunday S-9 and beaming USA ?
The way I finally worked a few countries north of me was good old backscatter beaming to SA. Just like working the east coast from Texas sometimes.
All in all a super experience! I used the high DL score from last year as a goal and was able achieve it. Although DL1IAO and DL4MCF both did the same along with giving the Texan a good beating too! Congrats guys! The best part was listening to the propagation and familiar callsigns from another location. Working a VU on 10m that was S9 +5db.. yep pretty cool.
DL0LD Single op CW Only 18 hours
1032 74 Countries 54 SP Final Score 528896
73 K5NZ -- K5NZ
DL0LD op K5NZ Station DL3YEH Detmold, Germany
Joey, W5BAK and myself met Maik, DL3YEH, while he was doing a exchange work program for college in Houston a few years ago. Since moving back home, Maik has wanted us to come for a visit together. Airfare was right so we decided to make the trip.
Maik took us to Berlin for a long weekend when we arrived and that is a whole other story!
I first want to thank Maik and Uta for their great hospitality and to Maiks parents Bernd and Karin for taking us into their home and treating us like family for a week!
Since the 10m test worked into our schedule I wanted to try to operate the contest. Joey and Maik werent too interested in a multi-op so they told me to do a CW only if I felt like playing.
The set up for the 10m test was a Fritzel FB-33 @ 60ft , Icom 746 and about 500 watts.
Thanks to the Detmold chapter of DARC for allowing me to use the club callsign DL0LD for the weekend.
Here are some of the interesting things I noticed operating from northern DL.
With only 8 hours of sunlight the band opens late and closes early from this QTH.
I started tuning the band at 0600z which is 0700 from my QTH. Nothing so I went to have a snack and came back at 0644 to find a booming JY9NX. He gives me #258. Not another signal on the band. Then a booming A61AJ with #4. Ok now some Russian buzz saws, more on that later, are coming through so I start picking them off.
Im watching my greyline map closely for clues to propagation, looking for a JA run beaming 28d as we are both deep into our greyline. It just never happens. I work a few JAs but they are weak and watery. I suppose they were too deep into darkness already for me to get anything going. Maik confirmed this and said in summer months the JA run is a good one but not in winter. I do work a few station further down the greyline that are still in daylight. VR2, ZL, VK.
Ok getting light and I am expecting a super run of European stations. It just never happens. I guess the fact that many of these countries are no further than from my home QTH to Austin and the skip is just too long. There are very loud Russians but not the depth of weak ones I expected. Strange. I was left to mostly S&P hard with a few 40-50 an hour runs until sunlight made it to the USA.
Ahh the Russians! I have never in my life heard so many interesting signals. You think some of those sound bad from the US Try being in their first skip zone. Buzzing, clicking, hacking, ghost signals, 20kc wide, I wish I could have taped the contest to allow you to enjoy some of this with me. It was really funny, I would be laughing out loud and Joey and Maik would come in to see what was so funny! Out of the MANY treats I enjoyed, I will share the top 2 with you. Im S&Ping and find a UA3, call a few times, nothing. I move on up and find him again. Then again, and again I finally hear the person he is working so I know I have found his true signal and work him. I found 6 ghost signals for this guy and they were all over S9. Sweet! I have a nice run freq at 28.024, clear and am able to pull out those ether signals. All of a sudden I have what I think are CBers on my freq. Damn the luck, but wait.. I tune some and it becomes clear that it is RA3 calling CQ Contest on phone. Nice! A spurious signal all the way down from the phone band!
Ok , moving on. I make my first US QSO at 11:45 with W1GF still in darkness. And things pick up from there. I do note that there is in fact an east coast advantage into Europe. Im not sure many of you realized that. : ) When it really became clear was when I worked a mobile in NY and one in FL that were louder than the strongest W5 I worked the whole contest. But thats life. The good rate hours to the US for me were a small window of about 2.5 hours but I made hay during those hours. 1400 and 1500 were my 2 high rate hours but only at 80 and 88 when I had expected 100+ to occur.
Speaking of my W5 friends, it was great to work so many of them! I know you always want to know how loud you were so here are the standouts. W5KFT was always the loudest . Stacks do make a difference I guess I will have to admit! NX5M was a close second, also with stacked arrays. Of course many of you I worked were not CQing so I didnt run across you over and over to make a comparison during different states of band openings. One stand out is my QRP buddy KG5U. Dale was S 5-9 several times running QRP and a tribander, so go figure! Nice job Dale!
I did work some interesting mults on strange paths that I yet dont understand. The standout was DU3NXE @ 12:46z on Sunday S-9 and beaming USA ?
The way I finally worked a few countries north of me was good old backscatter beaming to SA. Just like working the east coast from Texas sometimes.
All in all a super experience! I used the high DL score from last year as a goal and was able achieve it. Although DL1IAO and DL4MCF both did the same along with giving the Texan a good beating too! Congrats guys! The best part was listening to the propagation and familiar callsigns from another location. Working a VU on 10m that was S9 +5db.. yep pretty cool.
DL0LD Single op CW Only 18 hours
1032 74 Countries 54 SP Final Score 528896
73 K5NZ -- K5NZ
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