3830 Soapbox Comments

                    CQ WW RTTY WPX Contest

Call: AC0C

Operator(s): AC0C

Station: AC0C

Class: SOAB HP

QTH: Kansas

Operating Time (hrs): 30

Summary:

Band  QSOs

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

   80:  150

   40:  452

   20:  352

   15:  141

   10:    4

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

Total: 1099  Prefixes = 438  Total Score = 1,115,586

Club: Kansas City DX Club

Comments:

Equipment:  FT-2000 with the NS filter, Alpha 76pa, home-brew interface with

N1MM/MMTTY.  Antenna is an all attic stealth arrangement that covers 160m-6m

through a series of mostly monoband yagis of various types.  

New to this contest was a change from a parasitic type 40m to a phased drive

reversible.  A month of work on antennas was ongoing right up until a few hours

before contest start but did get completed.  

The 40m phased array was a very good performer and exhibits a better F/B now

with the phase drive vs. the parasitic drive used in the RU last month. 

Especially nice was the 15m beam which has been optimized with the W8WWV RVM

system that facilitates direct phase/magnitude measurement when adjusting a

beam’s trim.  

No equipment failures or other surprises this time matching the experience of

the RU.  

So with all the improvements in the antenna trim, I expected the results to be

much better.  But the conditions were trying at best.  Runs were far better and

signals generally stronger on the RU than this weekend.  

80m was noisy in the evenings although the loop helped.  40m slowed down early

in the evenings.  

I’m not sure if the sunspot was the cause or not...  But on day 2 (Sunday), I

would swear that 20m just shut down at about 11:30 AM local time.  The band just

faded out and was (by comparison) dead for several hours.  As the afternoon

progressed, 20m started up again and was strong.  Even 40m seemed to open an

hour or two later than the prior few days.  I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’m really envious of all the guys talking up the great propagation.  We sure

could have used more of that good stuff at this QTH!

The best Q of the contest was working UAE on 40m.  Quite a surprise…

Score summary was an improvement in gross over the prior year - but far short

of the target 1500 Q which I had set as a reasonable performance goal.  

73/jeff/ac0c