[NLRS] W0ZQ - 10GHz Contest Results

[w0zq at aol.com]

Well, another 10GHz contest has come and gone, and each year it gets more and more interesting.    Last month, for the first weekend, I was a part of the rover pack.   This month, for the second weekend, I joined the couch potatoes at Sisseton.   
 
The numbers:
 
Total points (km)   = 84,607
Total unique pts   =   2,000
Total score           = 86,607
 
Best DX = 358 km (EN15LL to EN34PM four times)
Total Number of QSOs = 418
Average distance points (km) per QSO = 202
 
Distribution of QSOs based on distance points (km)
        Distance (km)   # of QSO
          < 100                 24
         100 - 149             49
         150 - 199             97
         200 - 249           189
         250 - 299             50
         300 - 349              5
         350 - 400              4
 
As you can see, we ended up doing quite a bit of playing in the 150 to 250 km range with some excursions above and below this.   I think we pretty much established that a path length of up to 250km is fairly easy, and that path lengths of up to 350km are usually doable, sometimes with the help of CW.   
 
For the second weekend, starting on Saturday, I was planted on top of EN15kp in Sisseton, SD.   There was a line of rain, cumulonimbus like, out in front of us for the better part of the morning.   Many, perhaps all, of our morning contacts made use of this for probable rains scatter contacts as, despite the rover pack moving, my dish heading never changed until around noon-ish where we went to a direct path.    On Sunday, from EN15LL, we were greeted with coolness and fog ..... check out N0UK's pictures that he posted the other day.    The temperature started out around 56 degrees and climbed all the way up to 58 degrees later on.   I ended up wearing everything that I brought.   Conditions were as cool as the temperature and I found that I wore my headphones almost all the time ..... partly to keep my ears warm, mostly to hear the weak signals.     By midday, the rover pack was a bit closer and conditions had improved somewhat.    On Saturday the Red River Valley rovers were a no show for us as they battled their own weather and conditions.    On Sunday it was great to get K0AWU into the log eight times .... he helped to fill some of the gaps between rover pack moves.   Also a big thanks to NT0V for helping with some cell phone liaison with AWU.    Around 4:00 PM we packed up and headed home.   Along the way we stop and worked KM0T from 13 different spots, the last being Fly Cloud, EN34GT, at 291 km.   Mikes signal was always a good S9, sometimes better, with easy SSB contacts.   My feeling was that conditions were improving all through the day.
 
So, what did we learn ?   It isnt that difficult to make 250km contacts on 10GHz.   I continue to be somewhat amazed at how quickly we can get on a heading and peak the dish with its +/- 5 degree beam width.   I think the coordination of who was even and who was odd when we went to beaconing helped a lot.   I also learned to bring a coffee pot to Sisseton next time, a cup of Joe at about 9:30am in that cold fog would have been GREAT.
 
What are we going to do NEXT year ?   
 
73, Jon
W0ZQ