The Contest
Just before the ARRL CW, Randy K5ZD asked if I wanted to do a multi-op at his place for
SSB. I had already decided not to do SSB from home that weekend but I said that I would
let him know in a week or so.
On the weekend before the SSB contest, Randy put out a message offering his station so
I figured I better give him a call. He indicated that he was not that eager to operate and
I could do a single op if I wanted. But I wasn't so sure and since I had a mid-week, cross
country business trip planned I left it up in the air. At the time, my preference was for
a multi since I was not familiar with his station and he mentioned that there were a few
problems with microphone switching for two radios. When I operate from home, I have to
have complete stability and I make no station changes after Wednesday night. I was
concerned about being tired and unfamiliar with the setup and embarrassing myself with a
poor score. To further complicate matters, Randy said "Oh by the way, K1AR is also
doing single op."
I eventually cancelled my business trip and decided on Thursday that "no guts no
glory" prevailed and I would try single op. On Friday, I knew the word was out when
KC1XX sent me a packet message asking me to send Randy up to his place to operate. I
suggested that he take K1AR instead. He replied that K1AR will go up there after 36 hours
if he had me beat by then. I was little peeved but Matt later owned up to making up that
comment up by himself.
Randy said to meet him at his place at 23Z and he would give me the tour of the
station. We discussed single versus multi for a while and, at 2330Z, we finalized the
decision that I would do single op. I got the short tour and I was ready to go at 00Z.
I got off to a slow start as I got the feel of the station. I was CQing on 40 and
taking mults on the second radio on 20. Whenever, I went to 20 I was blowing away the
frequency settings on the run radio. It took a few hours to figure out what I had to hit
to switch radios. Then, on my first QSY to 160, I was getting no output. It turns out I
left the radio in split and was transmitting on 80. On the other hand, entering the
frequency from the CT keyboard for the 40 and 80 splits was a dream. I need to do that at
home.
Eventually things (and I) calmed down and stuff started to happen. 80 started to play
and I made sure I worked hard at 160, Randy's best band. 40 meters even had a EU sunrise
opening which did not occur on the CW weekend. After 10 hours I was at 448/172, and I was
relatively pleased, especially after a number of ops stopped by that night to say how poor
conditions were.
The dead time between sunrises was not too bad. The last EU worked on 40 was 0954Z and
the first on 20 was 1028Z. Twenty opened slowly but eventually broke for good rate. Little
did I know then but I was going to be around 14.164 for most of the next 10 hours.
After a couple of high rate hours on 20 I started listening on the second radio for an
opening on 15. Randy splits the headphones between the two radios, one in each ear. I do
not do that at home and I could never really use two radios effectively when I had any
kind of rate on the run radio. I have deep respect for anyone who can operate with a
different radio in each ear.
I primarily used the second radio to listen to KC1XX CQ on 15 to see if the band was
open. He eventually started to get sporadic answers but not enough for me to QSY. Later,
around 1530Z, I heard K1AR on 15. At this point I figured that I needed to give the band a
try. I CQ'd for about 15 minutes, worked a handful of guys at the noise floor, and decided
that it was not worth giving up the 100+/hour rate on 20 for this. I went back to my old
frequency on 20 and continued to run. I occasionally checked 15 after that. At one point I
heard K1AR again, he called CQ about 5 times without an answer, and I decided to just run
20 until it died. It turns out that the 15 meter decision was a fatal mistake the
magnitude of which I would not realize until later.
Twenty was absolutely incredible with Q's and mults rolling in all afternoon. After 20
closed, I searched for mults for awhile and went to 40 and 80. Had some success on 40 just
before 00Z. Finished the first day at 1573/286 with 1078 Q's on 20.
Around 01Z, K1AR stopped by asking to compare scores. I do not like to compare scores
since it tends to demoralize me, but I figured I had to give him a score. In addition,
Randy's computer had a problem where the colors in CT would arbitrarily change and I spent
most of the contest with the colors being pink and gray. As such, it was very hard to read
the score box. In fact I could not pick out the numbers without putting my face right up
to the screen. When we exchanged, I was stunned to find that I was 50 QSOs ahead but he
had around 40 more mults. The difference was 15 meters where he had 50 mults and I had 6.
He was up by about 150K but I was quite happy to even be in the ballpark. I never expected
to be that close, let alone ahead on q's. Things were not so bad and my feeling was that
if 15 had the same opening on Sunday, I could pick up the mults when the 20 rate was lower
and this could be a game.
I pressed very hard that night on 40, 80, and 160 and I slowly picked up some ground.
John told me he was going to sleep but I decided to stay up. I eventually took a 10 minute
nap when things got very slow. 160 was a disappointment the second night. Randy has a big
signal on this band and I was hoping to pick up some multipliers by CQing but it was to no
avail. By 10Z, my QSO lead on AR was 120, his multiplier lead was around 25, and the point
differential was down to 70K.
Twenty was even slower to open on the second day. I suspected that this would be a bad
omen for 15 despite the fact that the same thing happened on CW and 15 was better the
second day. After a few hours of running John and I were still 70K apart. Unfortunately,
15 never opened to Europe and there was no way for me to catch up on the multipliers. I
compounded the problem by leaving a runnable 20 to chase South Americans and look for
unusual mults. Not being able to effectively use the second radio really hurt at this
point. When I was on 15, AR had a 140 hour on 20 and it was never close again.
As of 18Z on Sunday my 10 meter total was 0/0 but I heard one of the LU's say that they
were going to 10 so I checked there periodically for the rest of the contest for the
sporadic openings.
Eventually ran out of gas in the last 2 hours and AR pulled away even further.
In the end, I never really recovered from the 15 meter blunder on the first day and
attempts to make up ground proved counterproductive. However, when the contest was over I
was not the least bit disappointed. I told Randy that it was like being handed the keys to
an Indy car on race day. My goal was to keep from smashing into the wall and not
necessarily to beat Rick Mears. As time goes on though, it is starting to gnaw at me.
Of course I would like to congratulate K1AR and thank Randy for the use of his station.
He has done a great job building the place. I have operated from only a few other places
but, in each case, I never really felt louder than I do from home. I expected the same to
be the case this weekend but it was not true. I felt very loud on all bands (perhaps is
was the fact that every 10th station said I was the "loudest on the band") and
the difference from my home station was very tangible. Randy's internal setup is very
simple and intuitive and, most importantly, it worked. The two radio setup proved to be a
handicap for me but a better operator could use it to great effectiveness. Interstation
interference was also near zero.
Randy was also the perfect host. He delivered orange juice and Wheat Thins (combined
with 4 bottles of warm soda it was my entire sustenance) and stayed away from making
suggestions or anything else that could be construed as assistance.
Another thing about his station is that you can look straight ahead out a window into
his backyard. It is very good for the eyes and eliminates the "closed in" nature
of contesting. It was particularly interesting to watch the weather since we had rain,
snow, sun, clouds, thunder, and lightning. In fact the snow static was so bad that nothing
could be heard at times.
About 6:15AM Sunday morning, Randy came down to say that it was lightning outside. I
said that was ridiculous in March. As he was looking out the window, lightning lit up the
sky, the radios browned out, and a tremendous clap of thunder came 2 seconds later.
Fortunately, that was the only occurrence but it sure woke me up for a while.
Overall, conditions were poor but I had a great time and I learned a great deal. Thanks
again to Randy for actually giving me an opportunity to compete for the top spot.
73 and thanks for the contacts,
Tom W2SC w2sc@emc.com
Continent Statistics
