This really is one of my favourite contests. For a couple of reasons. But it’s only fun if there is propagation to carry the signals far enough to work DX. Well, actually this holds true for most contests. I remember my magic year 2007 where I made over 2000 QSO in 24 hours. That was the first time I passed the 2k mark in just 24 hours. It has also been the last time. This year I was off for a slow start. I knew things weren’t going to rock but I didn’t think it would be this bad. In stead of working 120 QSO on 10m the first hour like in 2007, I barely made 100 QSO in the first TWO hours, and NOT on 10m but on 15m with some 20m. I call CQ and nothing happens. Waddayagonnado? Call CQ once more. Over and over again.
Now there is something I don’t understand. And there is a pattern. Last year I asked myself after this very same contest: How do they do that? This year, the same thing. CR6K: 2800 QSO. LZ8E: 2900 QSO, HG7T: 2800 QSO, UW1M: 2300 QSO. There are more big numbers, I just took the highest claimed numbers off 3830.
I missed about 3 to 4 hours of operating time because I just couldn’t be bothered to fight the need to sleep. I wasn’t rocking anyway and things were too slow so I was not really in a fighting mood. Maybe 160m was most active when I slept between 01.00 and 03.00 UTC? But other than that: it was a slow contest from here. With good rates and a feeling to put down a good score, I would have done the full 24 hours. I see three possible factors for the low score compared to the Top Scorers:
- ON is a bad location.
- ON5ZO’s antennas are not big/high enough. Especially since one tribander does not allow for successful SO2R.
- ON5ZO is not a good tactical operator because he’s always on the wrong band and needs to be on band Y i.s.o. trying to run band X.
Something else? I tried changing bands often though. I tried 10m for USA but nothing heard. Maybe I should have done more 20m and not try 15m? Did I go to 40m too early while I could have run 20m? I tried to balance out the QSO numbers between 40/20/15, but it seems the guys reporting big numbers have a strong imbalance towards 20m.
All in all it was good to do an all band contest again after some SB efforts. Next is EUHFC where DX is not an issue 🙂
3 replies on “IARU HF Championship 2011”
Franki
Ik heb in lp meegedaan in één van mijn voorkeur contests.
Ik heb dezelfde ervaringen als u .
De propagatie werkte niet mee, 80 qso s in de eerste 2 uur en enkele band wissels.
De pile ups konden mij niet wakker houden.
LY6A slaagt erin om 1500 qso te maken met lp, zijn ligging is nog meer naar het noorden….
Groeten
DIRK
ON4CT
ON is a bad location.
ON5ZO’s antennas are not big/high enough. Especially since one tribander does not allow for successful SO2R.
ON5ZO is not a good tactical operator because he’s always on the wrong band and needs to be on band Y i.s.o. trying to run band X.
I agree on all of them, but change the callsign to ON5MF 🙂 (and add one more line: not enough power)
[…] a bad performance still yields a surprising result. My IARU Championship performance in 2011 was NOT good, in fact it was pathetic to my own set standards. A boring contest too because of the […]