This was the second year that G3TXF operated as OE5TXF in the CQWW CW Contest. Last year (2020) it was a Single Band 80m (Low Power) entry. This year (2021) it was a low-key All Band entry. The antennas at OE5TXF are still all quite low in height. They are mainly wire dipoles. Even the centre of the 160m dipole is no more than 10m above the ground, with the average height of the Top Band dipole being only about 3m above ground.
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| Summary Table shows that for OE5TXF it was primarily a "One Pointer" QSO contest. On Top Band the average Pts per QSO is barely above 1, and even on the "best" band (15m) for Points/QSO it was only just over 2 pts per QSO. A lowly 1.35 Pts/QSO was the average. | The pole on the left (tied to a ladder) supports low wire dipoles for 80m and 20m, fed through a common coax. The pole to the right of the tree supports the centre of a 160m dipole. There are also low wire dipoles for 40m and 10m. The 40m dipole is also force fed for 15m. |
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| Total operating time was about 38 hours (based in a 15 min off-time break, but "42 hours" based on a one hour min off-time!). Operated throughout the first night, staying on until around 23z on Saturday. Then had a sleep of six hours before coming back on again at 0500z in time for the pre-dawn operation on 80m and 160m. Apart from a couple of short meal breaks, then operated right through to the end of the contest at 2400z on Sunday. |
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| The DXCC multiplier table (from N1MM) shows many "easy" gaps in the stations worked by OE5TXF: eg: there no GW worked on 160m! 3B8M was an astounding signal on 10m. The only six-band DXCC mults were CT3, EA8, G, OK, UA, UA9. Numerous Double Mults were missed because of my low signal : eg DU1IST on 40m. Similiarly I called a very loud B7C on several bands but clearly my signal never rose above his local noise level. |
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| The station at OE5TXF is an IC7851 with an Elecraft K3 amplifier. Unfortunately there's no simple way to get the IC-7851 to link directly to the K3 amplifier. Band changing is still more time-consuming and tedious than it should be. Although a decades-long dyed-in-the-wool Win-Test fan, the additional features of N1MM do however make it a handy logging software (despite the occasional crash) for some contests, including CQWW CW. To cross check the scoring I also load my CQWW CW log into Win-Test after the contest. They were very close. N1MM and Win-Test only disagreed with each other on what to do with "4U9A" in Italy. Both got it wrong. |
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| G3TXF has been operating from Austria as OE5TXF for just over one year and that now includes two CQWW CW Contests. Many other contests have been entered during that time. The OE5TXF QSO total is over 70,000. | A paper "time-sheet" is used for motivation. Time, QSO total, the Mults (Z and C) as well as the current Score are recorded manually every 30 minutes. This helps maintain operator enthusiam throughout the contest! |