Categories
Uncategorized

LZ DX 2014

Just a short note for the archives.

* 1777 contacts for 805k points in about 16 hours.

* I decided to sleep in the wee hours of the night and not risk being a total zombified wreck the week leading up to CQ WW CW.

* Many people giving CQ zone i.s.o. ITU zone. Even a few serials. Most of the time I tried to convince the calling station to change the exchange. Unfortunately some people don’t copy QRS CW. I slowed to down to 26-28 WPM to get my point across.

* Yes that is slow for me. I’m not a QRQ speed king but this time I stepped up from 32 WPM to 34 WPM. That seems to work with standard predictable exchanges.

* The question is what to do with these guys. ‘Log what is sent’ seems to be the most proposed solution. But what if this guy does not submit his log? Most casual DX ops don’t. If I log what is sent, the log checker will mark the contact as invalid because it has the wrong ITU zone. There’s also the option that the other guy sends out CQ zones during the contest and then before submitting changes the log to ITU zones in Cabrillo. To make sure he doesn’t look like a lid. Making all of us looking like lids. Cynical? Six years in the log checking business sir!

* I blew the dust off of my basic SO2R skills. Radio #2 @500W made 178 contacts or 10% of the total.  I didn’t feel the need to overplay my hand and try duelling CQ. With an average rate of +100/hr there is no need for such risky endeavours.

* I got called by some nice DX. I had to go out and get 3B9HA (80+40+10) but it was fairly easy. Gosh it’s a new one on 80!

* What about propagation? Hard to tell. The bands were open but not wide open. I didn’t work a JA on 10 and those on 15 were not quite loud. West coast USA was there but not the masses. That’s not good with regard to next week’s WW CW. No ZL at all and only three or so VK’s. YV, ZP, XE did make it on several bands. Maybe it’s all a matter of participation?

NW QRU SK

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.