92 countries in one weekend - G3XTT CQ WW CW 1996
92 countries in a weekend? No big deal .. But not bad if it’s on 160.
Having made a new England (as against New England!!) record on single-band 160 in 1995, I wanted to enter a different category this year, but needed to be available for family activities during daylight. So I decided to have a crack at single-band 160 assisted. It was going to be embarrassing if I ended up with an "assisted" score less than last year’s "unassisted" but, on the other hand, 160m conditions in 1995 were exceptional from here, with good signals from every part of the mainland US.
The first hour demonstrated to me that Packet can be very frustrating in a single-band 160 effort. I knew that each and every mutliplier was going to be crucial, but I was running at close to 100 an hour and it would not have made sense to break off for mults, as I would almost certainly have lost my run frequency (mults take much longer to work on 160 than on the high bands - the calling stations are all loud, the mult is frequently weak, and the packet pile-ups can be ferocious).
What I soon realised is that Packet actually is a benefit, but not in the way I had expected. Where it came into its own was later in the contest when very few new ones were being spotted. Having Packet gave me the confidence to continue to run when otherwise I might have been scanning the band for multipliers. Even so, I got some nice multipliers by finding them myself , with the great benefit that they were relatively easy to work by not having a Packet-generated pile-up. But also, by being free to run more than I might otherwise have done, some nice multipliers came to me (TI9C and D44BC are a couple of good examples).
Conditions to the US from here were well down on last year. I worked only one zero-land station (K4VX) and only a handful of 5’s and 9’s. Nothing at all from W6 or W7, although KL7RA called me the first night for a nice double multiplier. On the other hand, propagation to the East was outstanding. Despite this, I never did manage to catch a JA, but was happy to work A4, A6, A7, XX, XZ and VQ9. Who would have thought it would ever be possible to work an XZ multiplier on 160!?
As always, there were some juicy multipliers I missed. It was frustrating , for example, to hear FS5PL call a YV5, presumably for the multiplier, but never to hear him call CQ. And he probably called some other lucky so-and-so for the G multiplier.
The final tally was 967 Q’s, 23 zones and 92 countries, for a claimed score of 170085 points. My country tally was A4 A6 A7 CT CT3 D4 DL EA EA6 EA8 EI ER ES EX F G GD GI GM GU GW HA HB HB0 HC8 HP I IS IT9 J3 K KL7 KP2 KP4 LA LX LY OE OH OH0 OK OM ON OY OZ P4 PA PY PY0F S5 SM SV SV5 SV9 T7 T9 TA TF TK UA UA1(FJL) UA2 UA9 UN UR VE VP2E VQ9 XE XX XZ YL YU ZF 4L 4U1ITU 4X 5V 7X 9A. I heard well over 100 countries in all, so DXCC in a weekend in this event should certainly be on the cards some year. My zone tally was 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 14 15 16 17 18 20 21 24 26 33 34 (an N6 /MM) 35 36 39 40. Comfortably ahead of my 1995 score, and (I believe) a new world record for 160 single-band assisted (mainly because it’s not a popular category, but what the hell, a world record is a world record!).