CQWW CW, 25-26 November 2006

HB9CZF - SO AB LP CW

A few months ago the rotator broke the first time after 40 years and it was still being repaired. Apparently we re-installed the rotator just one week after CQWW. Therefore, I was stuck to the low bands and a fixed beam towards East and West (thanks to SteppIR).

I arrived at my QTH around 4am on Saturday morning and installed my K2/100. I soon discovered that the MUF on 40m must be very low because North America was much stronger on 80m compared to 40m. While I CQ-ed with my 100W I was surprised how many big-guns came back on 80m. They were not strong but seem to have good ears. Around 7am I heard two, three JA on 40m one of them (JA3YKB) even with a polar-flutter-tone. I never heard any JA on a morning and on 40m. Something was different this year and I assume this opening was Long Path since it was not easy to crack the K wall.

During the day I went home, had several forty winks, played with my 9 month old daughter and towards sunset I headed back to my Contest-QTH. Somehow conds towards East were not promissing. On 40m AH2R was weak, JA as well and nothing from VK/ZL. Towards West it was a totally different story: Caribbean and K/VE were booming in as I would expect. Later I saw on the Internet that the K-Index showed high numbers and they seem to go around the globe.

Saturday night around 11pm I was tired enough and I called it a contest (day), packed up my rig and drove home.

In hindsight I should have installed the 160m double zepp and spend some time on Topband. Somehow I was to lazy ...

Rig: K2 & 100W
Ant: 3el SteppIR and 41m LW.
Win-Test 3.6.1

Claimed Score

 BAND   QSO DUP DXC  CQ  POINTS   AVG 
--------------------------------------
  160     0   0   0   0       0  0.00 
   80   382   0  52  12     532  1.39 
   40   243   1  80  20     425  1.75 
   20   104   0  41  16     222  2.13 
   15     5   0   5   5      15  3.00 
   10     0   0   0   0       0  0.00 
--------------------------------------
TOTAL   734   1 178  53    1194  1.63 
======================================
        TOTAL SCORE : 275 814

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Update: 05.12.08