Helvetia Contest, 24.-25. April 2004
HB9CZF - SOAB CW
I took Friday off and my plan was to setup an additional LW and my station the day before the contest starts. I arrived at the hut around 11am, had enough time to unload my car and proceeded with the journey to my parents' house for lunch.
After lunch my dad (HB9CZI) and I headed back to the hut. First task was to climb the tower and attach the 27.5m LW perdendicular to the already existing 40/80m-LW. A second 27.5m wire should give the more head-capacity because during XMAS contest I had issues to get a "nice" SWR on 80m. Unfortunately thunderstorms approached us and we preferred to work inside the house for a while.
The station comprising of the usual Ten-Tec OMNI VI+ and K2/100 was improved by W3NQN bandpass filters and two sixpaks. They worked great and I was able to tune the bands although during the contest I forgot to switch to the right filter several times. Nothing broke.
After the thunderstorm with ligthning disapeared I climbed the tower. Both wires were strung and attached to the SGC-231 antenna tuner. This setup would give me instant access to all bands from 160m to 10m. I already planned to extend the 27.5m leg by another 10m. It worked but the SWR on 160m wasn't good enough for me. Another wire was found in the shack and the final lenght was approximately 50m. During the battle of the contest I could scan all bands and especially on the lower bands work whatever multiplier was missing. After the contest I had 27 passes and HB9GL was a clean pass-sweep from 10 to 160m (tnx Renato, HB9BXQ !). BTW: I only discovered canton GL Sunday morning and they were my only QSOs.
After the contest I was surprised to see that I worked all 26 cantons on CW and furthermore with my total of 121 cantons I even managed to get to the Switzerland HF Honor Roll in one weekend !
While I was planning this contest my main concern was the rest periods I had to take. Six hours in total that I could break into two parts. The idea was four hours during the night, don't miss sunrise on low bands and finish two hours before the contests ends. That was a bad idea. Unfortunately low bands were noisy all weekend (S3 noise on 80m an 160m) and Sunday morning was really slow ... Better idea would have been to take all six hours and enjoy the highband opening Sunday midday.
After a few e-mail exchanges with Phil, HB9FMU (he run a /p expedition from JU) I know that I did an excellent job on Swiss Cantons but lost terribly on DXCC multipliers especially on higher bands. Why? I was running 80Watts into a 3el 3band beam (the outer part of the 20m reflector didn't survive last winter) and two LW for the low bands. Phil worked with the famous Spider-Beam on 10/15/20m and dipoles for 40/80/160m plus 1kW. These extra 10dB made the different on the total worked DXCC on higher bands.
Anyway, I enjoyed the whole weekend. It wasn't as busy as I thought it would be (am I spoiled by CQWW, WPX, RDXC, ARRL, ... ?) but the simple SO2R setup kept me busy and working all 26 cantons in CW was a nice surprise.
Claimed Score
Band QSOs QSOPts Cantons DXCC ------------------------------ 10: 32 40 15 7 15: 119 193 19 23 20: 195 275 22 41 40: 302 338 25 40 80: 188 196 21 30 160: 54 54 19 15 ------------------------------ all: 890 1096 121 156 score: 1096 x (121 + 156) ---> 303'592
Continent List
160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total %
AS 0 0 10 22 32 3 67 7.5
OC 0 0 1 2 1 1 5 0.6
EU 54 184 284 155 82 28 787 88.4
NA 0 4 7 13 3 0 27 3.0
AF 0 0 0 3 0 0 3 0.3
SA 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0.1
Rate Sheet
CW+PH/Mul by hour and band Hour 160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total Cumm OffTime D1-1300Z - - - 1/2 31/18 14/8 46/28 46/28 D1-1400Z - - 10/10 26/18 16/8 2/2 54/38 100/66 D1-1500Z - - 2/2 60/16 6/3 - 68/21 168/87 D1-1600Z --+-- --+-- 52/15 15/3 --+-- --+-- 67/18 235/105 D1-1700Z - - 55/13 14/3 - - 69/16 304/121 D1-1800Z - 1/2 33/5 25/3 - - 59/10 363/131 D1-1900Z - 5/5 67/7 1/1 - - 73/13 436/144 D1-2000Z 3/4 53/18 1/0 5/1 1/1 1/1 64/25 500/169 D1-2100Z 25/17 43/10 1/1 - - - 69/28 569/197 D1-2200Z 16/8 30/8 - - - - 46/16 615/213 D1-2300Z 4/0 16/2 2/0 1/0 - - 23/2 638/215 27 D2-0000Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 638/215 60 D2-0100Z - - - - - - 0/0 638/215 60 D2-0200Z - - - - - - 0/0 638/215 60 D2-0300Z - 20/4 3/2 - - - 23/6 661/221 34 D2-0400Z 5/4 15/0 13/1 1/1 1/1 2/2 37/9 698/230 D2-0500Z - 2/1 20/4 1/0 - - 23/5 721/235 D2-0600Z - 1/0 25/2 11/6 - - 37/8 758/243 D2-0700Z - - 14/1 15/4 1/1 1/1 31/7 789/250 D2-0800Z 1/1 2/1 4/2 6/3 4/4 2/2 19/13 808/263 D2-0900Z - - - 1/0 39/6 - 40/6 848/269 D2-1000Z - - - 11/2 19/0 10/6 40/8 888/277 D2-1100Z - - - 1/0 1/0 - 2/0 890/277 Total: 54/34 188/51 302/65 195/63 119/42 32/22
Worked Cantons
QSOs MADE IN EACH COUNTRY
160m 80m 40m 20m 15m 10m Total
3A 1 1
4J 1 1 2
4L 1 1
4X 2 2 2 6
9A 1 3 4
BV 1 1
CT3 2 2
DL 9 29 51 5 94
EA 2 1 4 7
EI 1 1
EL 1 1
ER 1 1 1 3
ES 1 1 1 3
EU 2 2 3 6 1 14
EX 1 1 1 3
F 1 3 6 1 1 12
G 1 6 17 5 2 31
GM 1 1
HA 2 2 4
HB 25 46 48 34 34 22 209
HL 3 3
I 2 7 2 11
IS 1 1
JA 6 3 17 26
K 4 7 10 2 23
LU 1 1
LY 4 3 6 4 2 19
LZ 5 7 8 6 26
OH 1 3 5 7 5 21
OK 2 19 19 1 41
OM 2 10 13 25
ON 3 3 6
OX 1 1
OZ 2 2 3 7
PA 2 6 15 1 24
S5 1 5 6 12
SM 1 2 1 3 1 8
SP 2 5 14 4 4 3 32
SV 1 1 1 3
T7 1 1 1 1 4
UA 3 9 13 27 14 66
UA2 1 1 2
UA9 3 10 8 21
UN 2 2
UR 2 7 13 5 1 28
VE 1 1 2
VK 1 2 1 1 5
VP2E 1 1
VR 1 1
VU 1 1
YL 1 5 8 6 4 24
YO 3 8 5 16
YU 5 12 8 1 26
ZA 1 1
More Statistics needed ?
Gross QSO's=912 Dupes=22 Net QSO's=890 Unique callsigns worked = 529 The best 60 minute rate was 80/hour from 2026 to 2125 The best 30 minute rate was 100/hour from 2026 to 2055 The best 10 minute rate was 114/hour from 2026 to 2035 The best 1 minute rates were: 3 QSO's/minute 12 times. 2 QSO's/minute 185 times. 1 QSO's/minute 484 times. There were 194 bandchanges and 64 probable 2nd radio QSO's.
Multi-band QSO's ---------------- 1 bands 326 2 bands 107 3 bands 53 4 bands 29 5 bands 9 6 bands 5 The following stations were worked on 6 bands: HB9HC HB9XJ HB9AGO HB9IQB HB9GL ----- S i n g l e B a n d Q S O ' s ----- Band 160 80 40 20 15 10 ---------------------------------------------- QSOs 12 52 143 79 39 1