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Category: Contest Stories

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This was supposed to be a heads up battle with Jeff, N5TJ but instead I ended up competing only to myself as Jeff smoked me real bad:) He brought us all back to reality (reminding where CU2 is) and put the EU record safely away to some place that EU mainland will never be able to reach. So one goal less in the list, good!:)
But we did still feel good about the contest with station owner Ranko (read Ranko's great write up below mine!). We had several improvements and novel ideas implemented at 4O3A including first ever SO3R setup. You can see a picture of that on radio-sport.net. We really did our maximum given the station location and propagation but the only award was being able marginally break last years score despite worse conditions. 10m totally failed us after teasing with S-meter breaking US signals all through the weak. No NA was ever heard during the contest.

I am so much obliged to all 4O3A crew (attempting to beat the mighty Finns requires indentical Formula 1 team!) and especially Simo, YT3M, who took numerous 8 hour car trips from his home to build the antennas on Obosnik hill including putting back the 2 element 80m yagi a few days before the contest and completing 6/6/6 stack on 10. He sacrificed his own contest and earned god knows how many minus points from his wife (who by the way makes the best plum jam on this planet!) being on 4O hilltop for over a week and was alert to repair the stuff I destroyed during the contest. Well there were only some connector and antenna failures although I tried hard:).

My highlights:
-My first ever 300+ hour in the contest on Saturday evening on 20m. I went to 20 quite late before 18z when 15 closed. CQed and worked some guys with rather slow rate and thought the band is closing so took a 4 min toilet break starting at 1800z. When I returned and checked if my old CQ frequency is still free I heard a pile up going on and realized someone had taken it. Threw in my CQ message just in case to be sure. What followed is classic. They ALL called me. It appears DG2YGX had spotted me exactly at 1800z just after I left the mic and all the big guns where yelling on the frequency amidst a great mayhem thinking I am still there. Well, now that I was back I could work 188 QSOs in the next 30 min and score a clock hour of 304 with 55 minutes of operating - my own and 4O3A station record. This was the first time for me when the stations to work really lasted for 1 hour. And this will be one my greatest contest stories - while sitting in the toilet at 1803z the last thing I was imagining was that THIS PARTICULAR CLOCK HOUR will the the best rate hour of my contesting career so far:)))
-8 JAs on 10 was a comfort while band was closed to NA
-6 bands with ST2AR and being one of his 2 160 meter QSOs
-5 bands with S79K (missing 20m unfortunately)
-beautiful QSY from 40 to 80 with 9M8YY while 80m otherwise was very bad to all directions for me
-no LU on 80 (lowlight actually) but LU2DKT calling in on 160!
-being able to break the last years score although lagging behind over 500Q and 500k points in the first evening.
-tremendously improving mult count on 160m compared to last year (11/56 vs 16/68) but using the same vertical antenna.
-Compared to last year I have ca 10% less QSOs but a higher mult count and QSO point avarage. Also more QSYs (ca 100 vs 70) and more second radio QSOs (370 vs 290). The learing curve still is rather steep it seems.
-Young op ES7GM doing his first ever SO2R SOAB from my home station as ES5G and making ca 5m score despite some 40 operating hours only before turning into vegetable (not only lack of sleep but some virus and very high 38+c fever!) and his father having to remove him from the controls as his actions were not making any more sense:)
-VK2DX (VK1AA) posting on 3830. Simply hilarious and explodes in its positive energy. That made my day today sitting in Frakfurt airport having missed my plain home - I am always very slow for a few days after this 48 hour madness and 4 hours between connecting flights was just not enough, I made to my gate 30 minutes after my flight to Tallinn had left. So here I sit, in the restaurant of the cheapest hotel around, failed to make home while it is my wife's birthday today!! And sipping god knows what number of Jack Daniels already (preceded with plenty of German wine of course which none of you has ever heard about I guess but it is true, they make wine as well here and pretty good actually)...

My lowlights:
- Very bad 40m first night. Only US big guns had a decent signal and rates were way down from last year. Plus terrible QRM in the last precious 25 KHz.
-no 10m NA that we so much hoped for.
-403A spots (yes zero, not oscar) and all the dumb dupers who thought they have not worked me yet on this band as the logging software showed them this as fresh meat. In this case explaining the call does not help as they DO THINK they are calling 4-oscar-3A (not being able to notice the zero) and get further encouraged. I had this problem several times and there is really nothing to do, whatever I did to explain that something is wrong they kept calling. 200 dupes in the contest is a bit too much. The dupes still insisting to work me despite my vocal protests and explanations looking at only 10 minute window after the 8 (!!!) wrong "zero" spots are: SN2K, K1KP, N4RV, UA9UZZ, RG6G, W4ZR, K4ZGB, IW2LLH, PJ2T, KA8Q, KE4UW, NE3F, RC3W, K5NA, K2AX, PI4DX, TA7KA, N4RV, PY2SEX, ON6BR, UZ2M, KM1W, N3AD, W8CZN, DK1QH, RC3W, OH6RE, RK9DM, W4AKO, PA5F, NA2U, KF2O, K2AX, PY2SEX, HG10P, KB1W, K2ONP, W4AKO, NP2B, WX4US, W1RZF, OT2A, NK3Y, 9A7A, DR1A. Thus the "most diligent not thinker-spot clicker award" is shared with equal result of duping me twice after "zero spot" between K2AX, N4RV, PY2SEX, RC3W and W4AKO. God help those guys if any of them decides to post un-assisted!
-20m closing almost the same time as 15 in the 2nd evening around 18z not allowing me to have 11m points.
-I saw several all band active mults posting or mentioned in 3830 that I never heard or knew about and missed on all bands: VP2MDG, FO8RZ, V48M...

My mistakes and lessons:
-should have done more skeds, especially to low bands. I am especially sorry I did not agree 40m sked with 9M8Z as it always works and can be continued to 80m!
-spending too long time on closed bands (my old mistake not letting go and SO2R guy's temptation: oh great, I can do some SO2R! stuff)
-too little band changes. I was shocked to see Jeff's spots - he seems to change band every hour! Of course he has many bands to choose for running US all the time and I don't but still - I have always felt frequent band changes improve score but failed to execute.
-SDR on 3rd radio was great. I need to practice with it and it can be a great tool for many purposes! 3rd Radio in general need pracitce as well of course.
-Eat and drink a bit more. I have taken strict approach in the last 3-4 years: no drink, no food = no toilet breaks = 48h in the chair = maximum score. Well, I did develop a disturbing headache this time already some 12 hours into the contest and decided to try some delicious pancakes Ranko made and irresponsibly stuffed under my nose (I hope that will not be qualified assistance) and after 24h I did not have any more headache at all, eat some more pancakes and had in total 3 quick toilet breaks but felt better than ever with no problem to continue for another 24 hours. Magic. I review my strategy and will allow pancakes (pancakes will be my secret weapon) from now on and more than one quick toilet break!:)
OK, enough from my side, following is is the write up from Ranko, 4O3A (one of the most talented and highly regarded contemporary writers in Montenegro) that he asked to be included in the posting and at the end are the statistics.
The whole contest is recorded from all three radios so if anyone wishes to get the QSO drop me a note. I love to extract them from Win-Test with the cool extraction feature!!
CU in CQWW CW as MS from my home station!

73
Tonno
ES5TV

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