Article by Dominic Smith, M0BLF, edited by Thomas Wootten, M0FFX.
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 here (MP3 format).
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/
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).
Some pictures of the set-up are at http://www.domsmith.co.uk/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=892.
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 minutes during which we sustained a rate of four QSOs/minute or higher (individual minutes, not one 76 min period!). 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!
Dominic’s site can be found at http://www.domsmith.co.uk
Statistics on this page created by SH5 – rescab.nm.ru
SH5 v1.18 (25 June 2006)