K6IF's Quest - The 2000 ARRL 10 Meter Contest

Section 1 - The Solar Reality

All during my preparation for the contest, I was watching the solar data and forecast closely.  It became obvious several weeks before the contest that things were not going to be good.  As you probably know, the sun rotates about every 27 days (from the perspective of the earth).  HF propagation is greatly effected by the number of sun-spots facing the earth, which generate the so called 'solar flux.'  So 27 days before the contest, it was possible to take a good guess at what the flux was going to be for the contest, and the news was lousy.  As it turned out, the monthly solar flux cycle hit its low on December 9th, the Saturday of the contest, with a reading of 130 according to K7VVV's propagation bulletin (published by the ARRL).  Since the high for that month was 195 in late November, there was a huge difference between the peak and the valley.  Now, propagation is actually dependent on the average flux over the last 7 days or so, and things were not that bad during the contest, but the band was not open as long or as fully as it would have been if the contest had occurred two weeks earlier.

In addition to the flux being relatively low, the planetary A index, which is a measure of how 'stormy' the solar weather is, was 16 on Saturday and 9 on Sunday.  These are also fairly high, during the previous week the A index reached a low of 4 on several days.  This contributed to the relatively high noise level on the band.  When things are really good on 10 meters, the band is wide open and the noise level is very very low - almost silent.  That was certainly not the case for this contest.  While the solar conditions effect everyone, the low flux and high A index made the contest less fun than it might have been - with very short EU openings from California.  I noticed, in particular, that the Saturday morning EU opening was not very good at all.  Sunday was better (as the forecast suggested it would be, and as I had hoped it would be).

Section 2 - Geography Matters

In addition to daylight issues, there was a huge difference in the numbers of QSO's made with Europe and Japan by the various stations.  As you can see in this chart, I made many more contacts with Japanese stations than K5TR did - but many fewer with Europe.
 
 

Continent	K6IF QSO's	%	K5TR QSO's	%
North America	2243	79%	2279	72%
Asia	375	13%	195	6%
Europe	97	3%	509	16%
South America	70	2%	119	4%
Oceania	50	2%	29	1%
Africa	12	0.4%	14	0.4%

Here is a comparison of several stations in terms of QSO by Continent.

You can see that although the US counts were pretty close, there was a big difference in Asian and European contacts.  In fact, W5PR made
605 EU QSO's, vs. 97 for me, for a delta of 508.  Going the other direction, I made 346 JA QSO's vs. 286 for Chuck, for a delta of only 60.  Those 448 QSO make up more than the total difference between the winners 3195 QSO's and my 2847.

But enough whining about geography.  The bottom line is that these facts are interesting, but not really relevant.  The goal is not to explain my loss, but to prepare for future wins.  Since I am not going to move to Texas or Florida, the time and geography issues don't really come in to play.

Now, on to my retrospective view of the contest at K6IF.

Know Your Weaknesses:

It is a bit hard to see because of the way I entered the numbers, but I ended Friday with 463 vs. plan of 425 (see the blue line).  I ended Saturday with 1916 vs. plan of 1965, so I was under plan by 87 for that day.  That difference is pretty much entirely due to the fact that the band closed sooner than I had expected that it would.  On Sunday, I made 931 QSO's vs. a plan of 1035, again largely due to over estimation at the end of the day.  The fact is that I made almost exactly as many QSO's as I thought I would - in raw terms.  In fact, I had a total of 2990 raw QSO's vs. a plan of 3000.  But - and I hadn't planned on this at all, I had 143 dupes in the log at the end of the contest.  One station, I won't mention his callsign, worked me four times, and a whole bunch of folks worked me three times.  Now I wasn't doing much S&P - these guys all called me.  And I was giving my callsign after pretty much every QSO (as is my rule, unless the pile is huge).  So my only conclusion is that these guys weren't using a computer, and just worked whoever they came across on the band.  Whatever the cause, those 143 dupes cost me time that I could have been using to make good QSO's.

All that said, the one thing that really stands out in both my actual vs. plan numbers and in comparing my hourly to the other stations is my very poor showing between 21:00 and 01:00 Saturday.  I made 511 QSO's in those four hours vs. a plan of 600 and vs. K3EST's 675.  'EST is about 2 hours away from me, so we should have had very similar propagation.  He ended up with 121 more QSO's than me at the end of the contest - entirely due to my failure during this critical four hour period.  I am quite pleased with my performance during most of the contest.  I think that both vs. plan and vs. the competition, I did pretty much as well as could have been expected - except for this four hour period and one other error that I will talk about in a minute.  But this was a huge error.  What happened?

Well, I have two theories.  The first, and far and away most likely, is just plain operator error due to lack of experience.  At 21:34 on Saturday, I abandoned an absolutely clear run frequency at 28.321.  Why?  Because I was worried about Caribbean and South American multipliers.  I was missing a bunch of easy ones, and I was concerned that the band was going to close to those areas soon and I would miss them.  So I left my glorious frequency, and went S&P'ing for mults.  As I mentioned in part 6, I found 2 new ones, both of which I probably would have found on Sunday.  In exchange for those 2 mults, I gave up one of the best frequencies I had during the whole contest.  In and of itself - that doesn't seem to explain the huge rate difference.  But I think that I compounded the error by settling on 28.503 as my next frequency.  I went there on purpose, because I hadn't spend much time in the 'middle' of the band up to that point.  But I think in retrospect that it was a mistake.  It was a very noisy frequency, and I had a lot of trouble copying stations there.  I ended up moving again fairly shortly thereafter, and it took me until the JA's really started to come in to settle back down.  This was clearly a major error, one that probably cost me as much as a hundred QSO's.

The other mistake I have already talked about in Part 6 - calling CQ was too early on Saturday morning.  The real thing to notice here is that my multiplier count was lower than any other station in the top ten, by a long way.  At least 3-5 of those missed mults were due to my error on Saturday morning.  I am pretty sure that I could have made up the missed QSO's later in the day Saturday, but once the band was closed to eastern EU it was closed, and that was the end of the story.

Final Thoughts:

- The station as I designed it worked as well as could have been expected.  That isn't to say that I made the best use of it, but I think that I made good design decisions and executed the design well. I wouldn't change anything, in retrospect.  I do think that there is one thing that I will do differently next year - and that is to add the ability to have a second in-band receiver.  I think I could have picked up a few mults and felt better about not leaving my run frequency if I had the ability to find and work multipliers while running.  Other than that, the hardware was great.  I felt loud, and got great reports both before and after the contest.

- There is no substitute for an experienced operator.  I think that my phone running skills are pretty good - I am efficient, and I hear well.  But in comparing my score to those of more experienced ops, you can see pretty clearly that my relative inexperience hurt.  I was a bit surprised to come as close as I did to Bob (K3EST) over at N6RO's place - and he still beat me handily on both mults and Q's.  Ken's station is 3 24' boom yagi's on a 100' or so tower - very similar to my setup at N6NF.  I probably had an advantage in low angle radiation being on the top of the mountain, and I probably also had the advantage in northern Californian QSO's for the same reason.  None of that stopped Bob from beating me handily - he is just a better operator than I am.

- None of this would have been possible without the guidance and assistance of a group of self-less hams.  W4RNL, K2KW, N5KO, K6AW, N6RO, N6TV, K3EST, K6LL, W5PR, K5TR and many others contributed thoughts, advice, hints, and priceless insights.  Denis, VE6AQ, gave me the key to fixing my messed up antennas.  Dozens of you read my article, and sent me wonderful encouraging emails.  Probably 10 of you worked me during the contest, mentioned having read this, and wished me luck.  It is this sort of camaraderie that makes our hobby, and contesting, such a joy.  My deep thanks to you all.

- Finally, a huge bow to Tom, N6NF.  By inviting me into his home and allowing me to tear his entire tower and station apart, Tom gave me a chance to pursue this crazy vision.  His support and unending assistance made this not only possible, but great fun.

Next year, same bat time, same bat place.  Hopefully, Tom will be running a 2 stack of C-31XR's by then - but you can expect to hear me on the air next December, trying to move up the ranks.

The End
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