[ADXA] CQ WW CW - W5RZ

Mon Nov 25 17:35:12 EST 2024

Hi Dennis,

I’m working on my CQWW report for the group. Too many distractions today but I did want to go ahead and comment on your last note – auto zero beat. I want to believe I’m a decent pileup op (when I’m being called by the pileup). I can pick out calls even if there is a very slight difference – ask K5UR when I picked him out from the very bottom of a HUGE and LOUD JA pile up when I operating on 17 meters from KH6 many years ago. He was weak (sorry Rick) but he knew to be just a tad different in freq from the rest to get my attention.

This weekend. I would have five or six callers from EU and they were all EXACTLY on the same freq and about the same signal strength, not even 1 Hz difference it seemed. All it did was sound like a continuous tone. It was frustrating, but I worked through it although it cost me some time.

ZN

From: adxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net <adxa-bounces at mailman.qth.net> On Behalf Of Dennis Schaefer
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2024 4:21 PM
To: ADXA <ADXA at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: [ADXA] CQ WW CW - W5RZ

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

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