[TVARC] FW: ARRLDX CW K2DM SOAB QRP

[K2PS Pete Stafford]

Fantastic effort, George!  And great BITC too.  Not sure I could have operated QRP at this point in my life – I’d done it before years ago (don’t recall how I did), and gave it up entirely after an SSB QRP try (now THAT was tough!) – so I’m really impressed by the score you reached.  The station must be working really FB, and don’t discount the help a good XYL can be for a serious contester.  

 

Checking the 3830 standings, I see you’re the clubhouse leader.  We’ll keep our fingers crossed!

 

73, Pete, K2PS

 

From: tvarc-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:tvarc-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of George
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2020 4:30 PM
To: TVARC
Subject: [TVARC] FW: ARRLDX CW K2DM SOAB QRP

 

Clubmates,

Here are my results from this weekend’s contest.

 

Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986>  for Windows 10

 

 

                    ARRL DX Contest, CW - 2020

 

Class: SOAB QRP

QTH: Florida

Operating Time (hrs): 36

 

Summary:

Band  QSOs  Mults

-------------------

  160:   25    18

   80:   84    51

   40:  150    59

   20:  320    74

   15:   63    35

   10:   15    13

-------------------

Total:  657   250  Total Score = 492,750

 

Club: The Villages Amateur Radio Club

 

Comments:

 

>From 2003 to 2010, I won the QRP category for W/VE in the ARRL DX CW contest. 

This was when I lived in New Jersey and had monoband yagis at 90 feet on 40M –

10M.  I was motivated by a very friendly rivalry with Bob, K3PH and Doug, KR2Q. 

Often as not, one of us would win the category back then – except for the two

years when other ops named Briggs deposited me in second place.  Both of my

brothers had the advantage of better antennas and locations.  I suppose I may

have to concede a slight skill advantage to them also.

In 2012, I moved full time to The Villages – a deed restricted community in

central Florida.  Goodbye 90-foot towers and monoband yagis; hello attic dipoles

and 20-foot flagpole verticals.  While all of us contesters and DXers in The

Villages have made do with what we have, I have secretly kept an eye out for a

couple of acres just outside The Villages.  A year ago, I found a place, and my

wife Karen, K4ZDM, enthusiastically said to go for it.  It took from March to

October for us to ‘flip’ the 30-year-old single-wide trailer on the 2.4

acres of land and to put up a couple of towers.  The antenna farm is not

complete, but I had the objective of inviting the many friends who devoted hours

of time and effort to come use a station with real antennas in the CQWW DX SSB

contest.  Since then a handful of us have operated in a few contests just for

the joy of it, but I had always set my sights on doing a serious single-op QRP

entry in the ARRL DX CW contest.  The antennas are less impressive than back in

NJ, and the conditions are challenging, but I wanted to see how the station

would play.

With Karen’s full support I put in about a 37-hour effort.  It became apparent

early on that this was going to be a slug-fest.  It was humbling to have

stations CQ in my face regularly.  If I didn’t like them so much it would have

been humiliating to have my flagpole-vertical friends beat me in some of the

pileups.  W2TR, K3ZGA and K2PS come to mind.  Gary and Pete were probably

running a few hundred watts, but I know that Bob was barefoot at 100W.  Oh well,

hang in there, George!

I used my customary QRP approach of searching and pouncing as I tuned up the

bands.  When I found an apparently-clear frequency I would toss out a few CQs. 

These actually netted me a few dozen Qs, and they gave my mind a break.  I

started with a 30 hour on 40M, and it dropped to the low 20s for the next three

hours.  When I QSYd to 80M I had another 30 hour, which surprised me because 80M

has been hard for me in the past.  I ultimately made 84 Qs on 80M.  But 160M was

a big surprise.  I know all the big stations have been raving about how they

were able to rake in the Qs on 160M, but I was very happy to make 25 Qs there. 

(Including KH6 and a few 6-band Caribbean stations.  Sadly no EUs.)  And to have

15M and 10M sort of open was a real treat.  The 63 and 15 Qs I picked up on

those two bands really helped my score.

While I certainly did not expect to do as well as in 2010, I had what I thought

was the reasonable goal of exceeding last year’s winning totals of 519 Qs and

189 countries.  After I achieved that, I accepted Karen’s high five and

pressed on to see if I could reach 600/200.  When I got there, I told Karen that

630/215 would probably be tops for me.  I was getting really tired, the rates in

the last five hours were 10, 11, 11, 12 and 7.  I was channeling brother Jeff,

VY2ZM, with my chin falling to my chest as I tuned the bands towards the end. 

So, although I hate to admit it, when I hit the 250 country total with 80

minutes to go, I packed up and went home.

I can’t thank Karen enough for driving down to the station a handful of times

with REAL food for me to eat and for all the encouragement.

Next up at “The Land” will be this weekend for a few of us to play in the

160M contest.  Even though brother Peter, K3ZM, stole an ARRL DX CW QRP plaque

from me a decade ago I still get on and support him in the 160M contests.

 

 

Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/tvarc/attachments/20200217/7d4b7a05/attachment-0001.html>