[NLRS] 2006 10GHz & Up Cumulative Contest, W0JT (LONG, w/statistics)

[John P. Toscano]

I just got around to cleaning up my own logs and getting them ready for 
submission to the ARRL.

Summary:
                Callsign: W0JT
            ARRL Section: Iowa (I'm not from there, but that's where
                            I made most of my QSO's from this year!)
         Operating Class: 10 GHz & Up
             Total QSO's: 239
Unique Callsigns Worked: 18
              QSO Points: 1,800
         Distance Points: 47,412
             Final Score: 49,212
       Best DX on 10 GHz: 233 Km
       Best DX on 24 GHz:   1 Km

I was unavailable for the first weekend of the contest, due to my 
daughter's wedding and a boatload of out-of-town guests here for the 
weekend.  So all zeroes in all contest categories for the first weekend, 
although I give the wedding and reception and time with family a solid 
"10".  So I guess that accumulating a score this year that is more than 
half of last year's score (92,235) isn't so bad.

For the second weekend, I was in the rover group that ran around in 
southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa (mostly the latter).

I worked 18 different operators anywhere from once to 26 times.  (Mean 
was 13.3 QSO's per operator.)

I worked INTO only 4 subgrids:  the two subgrids where the metro "fixed 
stations" were located (EN34HL, 118 QSO's; & EN34GT, 107 QSO's), one 
subgrid where KMØT resides (EN13VC, 10 QSO's), and one subgrid at the 
end of the second day to get uniques with the other rovers (EN23JF, 4 
QSO's).

I worked FROM 19 different subgrids.  We worked from 13 subgrids on 
Saturday and 13 subgrids on Sunday, but some subgrids were the same on 
both days, hence 19 instead of 26 different subgrids.  I made from 6 to 
21 QSO's per subgrid from which I worked.  The 19 subgrids fell into 4 
grids: EN22 (5 subgrids), EN23 (8 subgrids), EN32 (1 subgrid), and EN33 
(5 subgrids).

Distance per QSO ranged from 1 Km to 233 Km.  Mean was 198 Km per QSO.

We operated Saturday from roughly 0730 CDT to 1930 CDT.  On Sunday, we 
operated from roughly 0700 CDT to 1730 CDT.  That adds up to about 22.5 
hours, but not all of that is ON time, due to teardown, setup, driving 
from site to site, etc.  Total operating time ("ON" time, including 
listening) was 10.2 hours.  Time actually spent from first QSO to last 
QSO at any stop (NOT including the listening time before or after 
starting to make Q's) ranged from 2 minutes to 48 minutes.  Q rate 
ranged from 4 QSO's per minute to 4.4 minutes per QSO.  The slower rates 
were typically caused by waiting for another operator to come on line, 
or extremely difficult conditions that required CW to complete, or both.

Of 239 QSO's, 235 were SSB, 3 were CW, and one was Tx WBFM and Rx CW. 
(That last odd split-mode one was my lone 24 GHz QSO.)

I had a great time, no major problems on my end (no falling dishes, no 
falling into holes, no car trouble, no running out of battery power, 
etc.) As I mentioned in my earlier post, my equipment needs some work, 
as I was reported to be weaker than most, and there were many occasions 
where I found it very hard to impossible to work stations that others 
were hearing with little difficulty.  I know for sure that there is some 
skew in my pointing, so I'm probably not getting proper illumination of 
the dish, and less than optimal gain.  I now have the proper equipment 
to measure both power and frequency quite accurately up to about 18 GHz, 
but haven't had the time to check the equipment that way yet.  Ugh! 
Maybe something for a nice cold winter evening indoors...

There's about a week left to get your logs turned in.  Please remember 
to turn them in!  Even though it's not a club event, I'd like to see the 
NLRS gang do really well once again this year.

P.S., if one or more of the rovers took GPS waypoints at our 26 stops, I 
would like to get the lat/lon data so I can prepare a map for my web 
page and for my ARRL Soapbox submission.  I had planned to record a log 
of the whole weekend, but it didn't happen.

73 de W0JT