I did not really plan to enter this year’s IARU HF Championship. We do some station sharing for the bigger contests between Uwe, DL3BQA, and me. In the past both RUSDX and IARU-HF were for the same OP (either Uwe or me) within the same year. To make that more fair we just recently decided to swap things, i.e. I had the RUSDX this year so Uwe would take the IARU this year, next year the other way round. Sorrily Uwe could not make it into IARU-HF due to short-term QRL, a pity. So I took the chance to do a non-serious effort just to hand out a few points and chase all the WRTC participants. 😉 All in all about 16 hours for radio besides some other obligations.
I was able to snatch all 59 WRTC stations (202 QSOs in total) to qualify for a few of the Activity & Participation Awards. Band by band breakdown shows 35 wkd on 40 m, 57 on 20 m and 55 on 15 m. N1S was worked on all 6 band/mode slots used, ufb! A big number of guys with 4 or 5 slots, too. All stations worked on at least 2 slots except for K1O whom I could only work on 20 CW, never heard them anywhere else. Wonder if they had some problems or just the wrong choice of bands vs. times? Was also thrilling to watch the live scoreboard and see things evolving. 😉 These ladies and gents really are the world’s top-notch contesters! Even the “worst” team did some 3.100 QSOs with just 100 W & a tri-bander plus dipole in 24 hours and the leaders made some 4.500+ QSOs … wow! These are figures us normal guys just dream about. 😉
Besides chasing the WRTC crowd I made some “normal” contacts, too, i.e. handing out points here & there. Did a few runs on 15 CW but not too much, about 80% of all QSOs were done by S&P due to the above mentioned chase. Used the cluster this time not to miss any WRTCs (as this was my main goal and reasoning for being QRV at all) so this entry goes into the M/S class as the IARU-HF does not have an assisted class. I did not take care of the 10 min band change rule for M/S so it might well be I will get reclassified to a checklog or even get “disqualified” for too many band changes within 10 minutes. A quick look into the log revealed at least 5 rule violations – so be it, no serious entry. 😉
Here’s the overall result of this part time activity:
IARU HF World Championship Call: DH8BQA Class: SO(A) --> M/S HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 16 Summary: Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults ------------------------------------- 160: 9 11 1 15 80: 24 26 5 22 40: 88 23 8 31 20: 137 82 15 30 15: 216 78 25 38 10: 31 23 8 19 ------------------------------------- Total: 505 243 62 155 Total Score = 563,115 Comments: Elecraft K3 + KPA500 = 500 W, 160 m lazy loop, 80 & 40 m dipoles, 20 m 4 ele YU7EF Yagi, 15 m & 10 m 6 ele G0KSC OWA Yagis each