Friday, November 9, 2012

KM6I SSCW 2012 Report

Call: KM6I
Operator(s): KM6I
Station: AD6Z

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: Los Gatos, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 23

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:   64
   40:  299
   20:  351
   15:  365
   10:    6
------------
Total: 1085  Sections = 83  Total Score = 180,110


Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

Many many thanks to my station host Kevin, AD6Z, for letting my use his amplifiers and aluminum farm again this year. Like previous years, Kevin provided me a local skimmer to feed me spots. He also heroically pulled a Macgyver when the wireless connectivity to my laptop failed, and built a wireless bridge from a Netgear router and some open-source software. And then when the amplifier failed he built a new one from a coat hanger, some aluminum foil, and a potato. Ok, I made that up. But the wireless bridge thing is true.

Elecraft K3 + AL-1200B
80M dipoles (E/W, N/S) @ 110'
2 el 40 (2)
5 el 20
5/5 el 15
5 el 10

When I sat down to plan for this contest, I looked back at last year's score and noticed that I was 17th place nationally in Single-Op Unlimited HP. Delusions of grandeur led me to calculate that if I could improve my score by 6%, I might crack the top ten and get my call listed in QST. And then I calculated that if I added 130 more QSOs and got an 83-section clean sweep, it would put me at 200,000 points, so I set that as my stretch goal. I created a target rate sheet for the stretch goal so I could track my hour-by-hour progress.

I also did a few things to reduce the number of QLFs, including using a full-size keyboard instead of the built-in mini keyboard on the netbook I use for logging. I also used a second, larger monitor to let me have larger bandmaps on screen. Last year I only used the netbook screen and the bandmap was just too short vertically to see new calls unless they were close to my run frequency.
I made sure to find a good run frequency about 15 minutes before the contest and occupied it right up until the bell. That paid off, with rates the first two hours of 94 and 84 vs 76 and 76 last year. I was excited to be slightly ahead of my stretch goal after the first two hours.

I stayed pretty close to my goal rate most of Saturday, and tried to use N1MM's SO2V support to get S&P QSOs queued up on the KRX3 subreceiver during slow times. I actually managed to grab a couple of extra Qs that way, and only lost my run frequency once. It was good to discover that managing the separate audio streams in each ear didn't cause my head to explode.

Saturday night I started to fall behind my goals pretty significantly, and I decided to stop at 12:30am local time instead of 1am like last year, hoping that starting at 5:30 would give me more time on 20 when the east coasters were there. I had 660 Qs in the log and was missing only RI.

When I got started at 1330Z Sunday morning, 20 wasn't happening yet, so I ended up starting on 40 and did pretty well, with 27 QSOs in 30 minutes. Maybe it was still a good choice despite 20 not working. I moved up to 20 at 1400Z and got called by RI for the sweep at 1419.

Later, though, things really started to come apart. The bump in rate I saw at 1600Z last year never materialized, and I kept sliding backwards toward my totals from last year. It really felt like I'd worked everyone, and everything the skimmer was seeing (and that I could find by tuning around) was a dupe. Switching bands every now and then would find a few fresh-meat calls being devoured by bloodthirsty pileups, and CQing on that band would produce little bursts of rate, but it wasn't enough to keep me on track. I kept at it, watching for new calls to pop up on the skimmer and pouncing on them.

Sunday afternoon, Kevin and I noticed that many of the big guns were showing skimmer spots on two bands at once - probably using dueling CQ mode on their SO2R setups.

Finally, at 0200Z after CQing on 80 meters for 10 minutes straight without a call, and staring at a bandmap full of grey, I decided to call it quits. On the bright side, I got home in time to say goodnight to my kids.

In retrospect, having the rate goals was motivating for the most part, and I'm glad I used them, even though it was frustrating on Sunday. I saw some 3830 soapbox comments where people felt like participation was down about 10% from last year. So maybe staying even with last year's rate was actually an improvement. The sweep might be at risk from log-checking, though, as I only have one contact each for NNY, ONN, and PR.

Looking at the 3830 claimed scores, I'm sitting in 13th 14th place right now. Well, there's always next year!


Thanks for the QSOs everyone!

-Gordon

=======

Rate Goals vs. Actual:


Hour 2011 Goal Actual

---- ---- ---- ------
2100   76   85    94
2200  152  169   178
2300  227  254   231
0000  297  331   316
0100  352  392   380
0200  414  462   448
0300  473  527   498    
0400  509  568   551
0500  560  625   595
0600  607  677   640
0700  643  717   660
0800  643  717   660
0900  643  717   660
1000  643  717   660
1100  643  717   660
1200  643  717   660
1300  643  717   687
1400  690  770   738
1500  733  818   776
1600  786  877   823
1700  836  933   855
1800  873  973   896
1900  901 1005   923
2000  933 1041   951
2100  960 1072   975
2200  988 1102  1002
2300 1022 1140  1031
0000 1052 1172  1068
0100 1078 1202  1085
0200 1099 1226  1085



Cabrillo Statistics           (Version 10g)           by K5KA & N6TVhttp://bit.ly/cabstat


CALLSIGN: KM6I
CONTEST: ARRL-SS-CW
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
OPERATORS: KM6I


-------------- Q S O   R a t e   S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour     160     80     40     20     15     10    Rate Total    Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
2100       0      0      0      0     94      0     94     94    8.7
2200       0      0      0      0     84      0     84    178   16.4
2300       0      0      0     34     19      0     53    231   21.3
0000       0      0      0     85      0      0     85    316   29.1
0100       0      0     37     27      0      0     64    380   35.0
0200       0      0     68      0      0      0     68    448   41.3
0300       0      0     50      0      0      0     50    498   45.9
0400       0      0     53      0      0      0     53    551   50.8
0500       0     11     33      0      0      0     44    595   54.8
0600       0     40      5      0      0      0     45    640   59.0
0700       0     13      7      0      0      0     20    660   60.8
0800       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
0900       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1000       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1100       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1200       0      0      0      0      0      0      0    660   60.8
1300       0      0     27      0      0      0     27    687   63.3
1400       0      0      0     51      0      0     51    738   68.0
1500       0      0      0     24     14      0     38    776   71.5
1600       0      0      0     30     17      0     47    823   75.9
1700       0      0      0     14     17      1     32    855   78.8
1800       0      0      0      0     41      0     41    896   82.6
1900       0      0      0      1     25      1     27    923   85.1
2000       0      0      0     11     17      0     28    951   87.6
2100       0      0      0     14      6      4     24    975   89.9
2200       0      0      0      1     26      0     27   1002   92.4
2300       0      0      0     24      5      0     29   1031   95.0
0000       0      0      3     34      0      0     37   1068   98.4
0100       0      0     16      1      0      0     17   1085  100.0
0200       0      0      0      0      0      0      0   1085  100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total      0     64    299    351    365      6   1085


Gross QSOs=1095        Dupes=10        Net QSOs=1085


Unique callsigns worked = 1085


The best 60 minute rate was 95/hour from 2342 to 0041
The best 30 minute rate was 104/hour from 2103 to 2132
The best 10 minute rate was 120/hour from 2112 to 2121


The best 1 minute rates were:
 3 QSOs/minute   10 times.
 2 QSOs/minute  204 times.
 1 QSOs/minute  647 times.


There were 30 bandchanges and 1 (0.1%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.





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