Call: WQ5W
Operator(s): WQ5W
Station: WQ5W
Class: SO CW LP
QTH: Texas
Operating Time (hrs): 27.7
Summary:
Mode QSOs Mults
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CW: 1325 137
SSB:
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Total: 1325 137 = 727,744
Club: North Texas Contest Club
Comments:
Rig: TS-850S
Ant: TH-7 @ 55'
This one turned out a lot better than it looked on Friday. The
weather forecast on Friday predicted thunderstorms starting Saturday
and lasting all weekend. I don't operate during thunderstorms,
so I figured the contest would be a washout (literally). Still, I
decided to give it a shot.
I kept an eye on the weather radar all weekend. On Saturday we had
thunderstorms to the west and to the east, but all we got was a brief
shower late Saturday afternoon. I disconnected all the antennas
Saturday night after the band died. Good thing, since the skies
opened up about an hour later and we had heavy thunderstorms all
night long. Fortunately, we had a break in the rain when I woke up
Sunday and I reconnected without losing any time. During
the middle of my Sunday EU run, the heavy rain returned, but with no
thunder. It did cause a lot of static, so I lost a lot of Q's on
signals I could have copied easily on Saturday with no rain static.
I did have to QRT Sunday afternoon for about 30 minutes when a shower
with thunder came through.
Since I thought I would have limited operating time, I made a
concentrated effort on S&Ping for mults. The strategy seemed to pay
off as I ended up 3 more mults than last year. Even though I made 17
less Q's I still ended up with a raw score almost 7K higher than
last year's total.
Worked all 50 states and all VE provinces except for LAB, NWT and
YT. Toughest DX mult was XE2AC who stuck with me for about 3 minutes
to pull me out of the backscatter-thanks!
Worked more JA's than I did last year, but didn't hear much
else from Asia other than UA0's. Also seemed like there were far
fewer Caribbean/SA stations on and Africa was almost nonexistent.
Found it interesting that my biggest EU QSO count came from OK-even
more than DL!
Operated 27.7 hours, which is about 24 hours more than I thought I
would get going in. Conditions seemed as good as last year, maybe
even a little better. This is probably my favorite contest when
conditions are good since even the little guys get to experience
steady good rate throughout the contest. We ended up with about 4
inches of rain this weekend, which made it nice to have something fun
to do indoors. Thanks to all for the Q's!
