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CQWW CW 2015 Contest experience single op high all band





Start in the early Saturday morning very short night after a party the Friday night before.
Soon I had to change the logging PC for a faster one.  Unworkable  delays in T/R tx-ing and tx hanging for seconds  forced me to stop.
I transferred  to a Lenovo W510  and  N1MM+    since then flawless CW  without the annoying delays.
I had used this "slow Dell D420 low power Laptop  long time in PACC and other contests without much problems.



I transfered my rotary 40-10m dipole into a 4ele yagy for 10 and 15m  and  the 1 ele for 40 and 20m
This is a Japanese Hidaka Denky   VS-2440 multy band Yagi/Una


My plan was to use a bit more antenna in the CQWW CW  
 Last weeks we had terrible weather wind and rain. Only Thursday was a break.
In the night at full moon no wind it was a challenge to do the antenna work using a head light.
I had romoved the 4 and 6m beams.   in 4 hours time it was ready to test but it was already 1 in the morning and next day I had to be at QRL.
Matching was good.  Directional seemed okay getting more noise from direction of the city at 6 km.
I left WSPR on next morning hoping for super result... but no decodes of VK2KRR in the morning
28MHz greyline peak whilst neighboring PD0OHW had a Leigh VK2KRR decode
Another confirmation to me that the effect of Yagi antenna's are overvalued propagation /location is 99% of the result.

I could use it  Saturday morning at Sunrise  when 15 and 10 should go open.
But high bands where marginal  just a few USA at prime time in the afternoon.
Weak signals at 10m from Asia and N-America.

Then the weather forecast came with severe storm warnings starting Saturday night  and lasting whole weekend... How convenient...
I decided  to take the 3 elements down again to work with the dipole as before..
Another 3 hours of operating  missed.
Already in strong wind i tilted the mast up again.
Then  the 80m  vertical antenna was broken struck in the trees....
Fortunately I just had an 80m inverted V dipole as spare
I found the dipole much better in the short range to about 2000km   Already notice big difference in signal strength from almost unreadable  to  S7 for short ranges.
Still I thought that the vertical should be better for DX.
But now i doubt that very much.
Only if the vertical has a perfect ground plane and no obstacles  nearby that will be true.
But my vertical was  in  parallel  at about 4m  from the metal mast, it works  but "everything works"
The vertical was noisy  low efficient compared to the simple inverted V dipole.
So it can be removed  that was learned in the battlefield of the CQWW-CW..
What more did I learn the hard way in the CQWW-CW
The ropes of the inverted L  and the dipole needed replacement ..
I lost both wire antenna's in a fierce storm Sunday evening..
And the Hidaka Denky  is rated for 2000W PEP   could not eat the power of the ACOM1000
Sudden the SWR went sky-high  in a heavy storm wind.

I should have been easy to reach the  2  million points
But I was complete out of business at 18UTC  the end   at  2180 QSO
Anyway this is my highest single operator score so far.

I had to rest a bit anyway  when I got serious problems to take call signs after 1900 QSO had to take a break and searched for some multy's  since the Sunday aftenoon was dead tide here I was running endless CQ  without response at all bands that is tiring more than a nice pile..
Lost time int he crazy pile of 3B9HA Rodrigues Island at 15m. Why did he send his call everytime in such pile??

Could work CE0/R4WAA  Easter Island  zone 12 much easier

XE2X  at 160m was a nice one
 And lots of rare lonely planet locations activated in this major contest.
Missed zone's 1 32 37

Real nice  USA run at 15m a pleasure to work W's VE's disciplined and FB signals including
a lot west coast.
I hope to get the  40/20m traps replaced or repaired  since this type rotating 40-10m is a killer contest antenna  not much turning  UA  and W same



However the latest N1MM +  in general logging gives overflow  errors the general log is too big
And it is complicated to merge logs in N1MM+    the clasic can merge ADIF to already existing logs
As lonbg as the logs are of same contest types. It justs skips the double entries.
But I was not able to import a single Adif qso record. It just ends in error about having the same time stamps  although the imported adif contains only a single new contact.
I have reported the error to  problem@N1MM.com

N1MMLogger.net - Version 1.0.5334.0
Built: 12/1/2015 7:16:34 PM
Microsoft Windows NT 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1,64:1,nl-NL,nl-NL
Error occurred at: 12/1/2015 8:26:43 PM in Thread: 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
System.OverflowException: De rekenkundige bewerking heeft geresulteerd in een overloop.
   at N1MMLogger.Net.CDx.ComputeScore(Int32& PointTotal, Int32& Mult1Count, Int32& mult2Count, Int32& Mult3Count) in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Contest Classes\CDx.vb:line 409
   at N1MMLogger.Net.ScoreRow.Total() in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Classes\ScoreRow.vb:line 50
   at N1MMLogger.Net.ScoreRow.ScoreString() in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Classes\ScoreRow.vb:line 42
   at N1MMLogger.Net.ScoreRow.Description() in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Classes\ScoreRow.vb:line 37
   at N1MMLogger.Net.ScoreClass.Description() in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Classes\Score.vb:line 126
   at N1MMLogger.Net.ScoreSummary.UpdateScore() in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Forms\ScoreSummary.vb:line 119
   at N1MMLogger.Net.ScoreSummary.UpdateScoreThreadSafe() in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Forms\ScoreSummary.vb:line 107
   at N1MMLogger.Net.ScoreSummary.RefreshScoreSummary() in C:\N1MM+Source\N1MM Logger on .NET\N1MM Logger.Net\Forms\ScoreSummary.vb:line 167





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