G3TXF in CQWW-CW Contest - Nov 2011

G3TXF Claimed Score : 10m SOSB (un-Assisted) : 2,393 QSOs : 37z : 123c : 862,720 points
DX
Top 20
 - DX
Top 20
W
1,182
 - HA
24
UA
193
 - G
23
UR
112
 - LY
23
VE
84
 - LZ
23
UA9
78
 - UN
23
DL
65
 - SM
22
SP
42
 - EU
20
YO
42
 - EA
19
I
35
 - F
19
OH
31
 - OM
16
Great to see 10m getting back to its former self, with worldwide DX available for hours on end.

This year a 4-el 10m yagi was installed at 80ft just prior to the CQWW CW contest.

On both days the band started to come to life about one hour before our sunrise. However the closing time for 10m was different on the two days.

On Saturday the run to the USA stopped at 1800z and by 1845z 10m had closed. However on the Sunday, 10m stayed open for a further sixty minutes with the last QSO being made at 1945z.
Although there were good runs to the USA (1,182 W QSOs), 10m conditions did not allow any runs to JA either SP or LP. In fact Japan was difficult to work. There are only five JAs in the log, as compared with 15 BY stations. [Years ago BY1PK and BY1QH were the only game in town in China. Oh, how things have changed!].

In SOSB (un-Assisted) there is a need to do S&P to search for mults as well as to spend much of the time running. However the number of DX stations who are running CQWW pile-ups WITHOUT giving their callsign with every QSO seems to be on the increase. This is probably another side-effect of the Spots/Cluster phenomenon whereby most (i.e Assisted) stations on the frequency at least think they know the callsign of the DX station running the pile-up, whereas the un-Assisted ops just have to wait until the DX-Contester deigns to give his callsign. There were one or two major operations who were regularly just not giving their callsign, until prompted to do so.
Single 4-el 10m beam at 80ft installed for a 10m SOSB entry in CQWW CW 2011.

Three Zones were missed : 12 (no CE), 19 (no remote UA0) and 39 (just didn't spend enough time looking). However a major highlight was working KH7X on the long-path (South from UK) on Saturday morning for a nice double-mult (KH6/z31).

On Sunday afternoon there was a short period during which relatively close European stations were just not copiable because of huge echos and atmospheric distortion of the signal. For example G3TXF failed to work PI4DX when he called during a particularly bad patch of the atmospheric distortion of closer signals. This was because G3TXF was just not able to read the echo-ridden/distorted signals even though PI4DX was very loud.

Operated for 12 hours on Saturday and for 13 hours on Sunday. Win-Test tells me that the best hour (14z-15z) on Saturday was 154 QSOs, whereas the best hour (17z-18z) on Sunday was 177 QSOs.

Let's hope we have at least a couple of years with good (or even better) conditions on 10m before the new sun-spot cycle peaks and then starts its decline.
G3TXF has participated in CQWW-CW in 41 out of the past 44 years !
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