[ADXA] CQ WW CW - W5RZ

[Dennis Schaefer]

We have a gathering here for Thanksgiving, so there is a lot to do.  I
intended to just cruise 80M to try to get up to 100 on that band.  Then
people started talking about the club aggregate score, and I decided I
could probably crank out a couple hundred Q's.   Here's how I ended up;

321 Q's
220,836 points
400 watts
6-7 hours.
Force-12 C-3 tribander up 56 feet, 40M dipole, 80M guy wire
verticals/slopers

40M was in good shape, and I got 36 countries.  Signals were loud!
10 was the highlight, as expected - 62 countries and 26 zones.
80 wasn't much for me but I got 15 countries including one new band counter
(CT).  I've worked CT before, so I just need to squeeze a verification out
of one of them.  The guy wire verticals played well.  SA, CA, and Carib
were about 2 S-units better on the S vertical, and EU was about 2 S-units
better on the NE vertical.  However, neither of them reduced noise so that
was the problem.  I spent about a third of my time fighting it out on 80
with little payoff.  I guess this stuff ain't supposed to be easy, though.

I got Kevin at  ZF5T on 6 bands in 24 hours, and he was generally very
loud.  I wanted to have a second rig set up to listen to both sides of his
2BSIQ operation but didn't have things hooked up that way.  It was
interesting to watch RBN and see four or more Q's on two different bands
within one minute.  SO2R is challenging enough, but this is not something I
would want to try.

The big surprise was that I got two new band counters on 20M (FS and J8),
two on 40M (HC and IS0), and one on 10M (V7).

I did see one troubling trend.  I've seen this in POTA and Field Day, where
many operators are inexperienced, but it now has worked its way into
DXing.  I tried to run a little on 10M, and often I could hear just a
single tone.  I never use Auto Zero Beat when working DX.  If everyone
calling is exactly zero beat, it's almost impossible to pick out one.
Apparently more ops have discovered Auto Zero Beat and think it's a good
thing.  It's not.  50 Hz or less separation from the pack will let your
signal be copied.

I had fun and got everything done that had to be done, so it was a good
weekend!
73,
Dennis/RZ
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/adxa/attachments/20241125/cb83514f/attachment.html>