CQ WW SSB 2006

I participated in the CQWW DX SSB Contest from the Cambridge University Wireless Society, using our contest callsign M4A.

A short audio clip (1m37s) of me running on 20m at about 1220UTC on Sunday can be heard here (RealAudio format), or you can watch a short video of our operation.

Download the propagation forecast document that we used for planning the contest entry.

Result

We came 3rd in England in the Multi-Single category, behind G5W (6,020,739 points) and G6PZ (4,165,560 points). With 2,267,870 points, we lost about 11% of our claimed score in log checking.

Summary

Contest         : CQ World Wide DX Contest
Callsign        : M4A
Mode            : PHONE
Category        : Multi Operator - Single Transmitter (MS)
Overlay         : ---
Band(s)         : All bands (AB)
Class           : High Power (HP)
Zone/State/...  : 14
Locator         : JO02AF
Operating time  : 41h13 
BAND   QSO DUP DXC  CQ  POINTS   AVG 
--------------------------------------
  160    73   0  40   6      78  1.07 
   80   281   0  61  12     331  1.18 
   40   396   0  85  23     797  2.01 
   20   980   8 118  35    1845  1.88 
   15   591   0 113  31    1004  1.70 
   10   189   2  53  16     247  1.31 
--------------------------------------
TOTAL  2510  10 470 123    4302  1.71 
======================================
       TOTAL SCORE : 2 551 086

Operators: DL5RB, G3ZAY, G7VJR, KC5WNG, M0BLF, M0DEG, M0FFX, M0HSW, M0TDG, OZ7AGL
Soapbox: A very fun contest entry with a large team made up almost entirely of current students or recent graduates of Cambridge University. We had our fair share of problems, such as melting two baluns during the weekend, which left us with 80m for much of Sunday evening, and we also had only one 14/21/28MHz antenna, so the mult station could not use these bands while the run station was on one of them. Nevertheless, we improved on our score from last year and felt that conditions weren't as bad as they might have been. More information at http://www.domsmith.co.uk/contests/cqww06/

Video

Set-up

Run station: FT-1000MP, Quadra, Dunestar filters.
Mult station: FT-2000, TL-922, Dunestar filters.

Antennas: 160m dipole, 80m phased array, 80m dipole, 40m four-square, 40m rotating dipole, Stepp-IR.

The antennas were shared between the run and mult stations. This means, of course, that while the run station was on 20m, 15m or 10m, we could not use the mult station on any other of these bands (except if we forced the 40m rotating dipole onto 21MHz).

Logging was with Win-Test, which worked very well except for a small bug in the communication with the FT-2000 (hardly surprising given how new the rig is).

Highs and lows

Good points were beating last year's score and taking the opportunity to introduce many students to contesting for the first time.

Low points included melting two baluns, which meant that we couldn't use 80m for the last four hours on Sunday; getting the mobile tower stuck and not having sufficient antennas for a full mult station.

Band breakdown

(QSO totals below include dupes)

Band	QSO	%	Time	%	QSO/min.
160	73	3	79	4	0.924
80	281	11	273	13	1.030
40	396	16	409	19	0.968
20	988	39	855	39	1.160
15	591	23	411	19	1.440
10	191	8	149	7	1.280
Total	2520	100	2176	100	0.877

Distribution

There were 1970 unique calls in the log, of which 2 were worked on all bands, 8 on five bands, 24 on four bands and 82 on three bands.

Rates

There were 76 individual minutes during which we had a rate of four QSOs/minute or higher. On average, we made about 1.02 QSOs/minute during the 41h13min on-time.

The hourly contacts per hour rates were:

Date  	UTC	Rate
28/10 	0000	59
 	0100	83
	0200 	122
	0300	66
	0400	30
	0500	18
	0600	29
	0700	40
	0800	94
	0900	55
	1000	57
	1100	55
	1200	118
	1300	72
	1400	85
	1500	124
	1600	74
	1700	94
	1800	99
	1900	32
	2000	28
	2100	30
	2200	54
	2300	26
29/10	0000	10
	0100	8
	0200	15
	0300	16
	0400	9
	0500	23
	0600	12
	0700	24
	0800	31
	0900	61
	1000	101
	1100	85
	1200	95
	1300	127
	1400	35
	1500	74
	1600	30
	1700	34
	1800	57
	1900	63
	2000	21
	2100	15
	2200	12
	2300	18

Thanks to everyone who contacted us!

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