CQ WW CW 2012 - OK4BX
CQ WW CW contest is one of my most favourite contests in year. I participate every year if it is possible. There is no change on our station, so I decided try newly assisted category with data from public reverse beacon network. Made pre-contest tests and it looked promising.
I found dx cluster telnet.reversebeacon.net:7000, where are aggregated data from all skimmers around world. At first I setup filter to put away data from skimmers outside EU to make spots relevant and reduce incoming traffic. Even so, trafic was really huge and Writelog logger occupied approximately 50% cpu load to keep band map up to date.
Well, I started on Saturday morning, band map was filled immediately, so many DXes there. I did not know where to tune first. So, I was jumping upper bands from frequency to frequency and tried to learn some systematic style how operated in assisted category.
I must say that RBN spots were pretty accurate and it was extremely comfortable to see who is on the frequency. Thanks to RBN, I made many DX which I would never recognize while normal non-assisted band scan. DXes simple shine on bandmap as multiplier. It is completely different situation to know if there is DX station or not. I simply tuned there and slightly checked frequency ± for longer time and usually succeed even signals were pretty week.
Many signals during weekend were affected with auroral flutters. That was nut for me to copy them, but always advantage cause skimmers couldn’t decode them and kept DX without huge pile ups.. Thanks to this situation I had opportunity manage qso with KH6LC which made my day!
| QSO | Zn | Dx | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 160M | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 80M | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 40M | 196 | 22 | 68 |
| 20M | 207 | 24 | 63 |
| 15M | 232 | 26 | 67 |
| 10M | 165 | 23 | 57 |
| Total | 800 | 95 | 255 |
| Score | 593600 | ||
Later, after contest I was thinking about hamradio contests and about assisted category. In my humble opinion, contesting in assisted category lose sense for me. It is something like run orienteering with GPS navigation and it is more about skill how control navigation, than run itself. I just like random contacts. I decided send my log as CHECKLOG.
During weekend I was in touch with my friend Stefano IZ3NVR. He was QRP assisted, so we kept motivated and chatted meanwhile contesting :) Very informative for me too. Great contest with many DX!
Click to see in google maps
Comments
Checklog is the fairest
Checklog is the fairest category :) congratulations!
Thanks! BTW, nicely told :)
Thanks! BTW, nicely told :)
Very nice touch with the
Very nice touch with the Google Map showing your contacts! Is that populated by grid square? Anyhow, great read and nice job in the contest! Just missing one station I can think of. :0) 73 from Alaska!
Phil, geo data came from
Phil, geo data came from hamqth.com (free). Petr have addresses converted to coordinates (there is google service which do that). I wrote simple script for interact hamqth.com and create KML file for my needs. I found some other programs which do same. People which are not in database are located upon cty.dat file. I really love to see contest on map, in USA you can see antennas by many stations on max zoom :)
Ahoj Tomas, great score. A
Ahoj Tomas, great score. A pity you did not send it in in the assisted cat.
I may agree with you as far as your idea of assisted. Indeed you still need skills and you will always compete with others trying to improve those above cited skills.
Its just a different mean of contesting (and that's why the two different categories should remain).
Really enjoyed the contest and will think about entering Ass or Unass next time.
Stefano, there is too many