Ken Harker WM5R
2011 ARRL International DX Contest, Phone, K5TR (WM5R, op. ) SOSB/15


Claimed Score

Band QSOs Mults
15SSB 1400 116
Totals 1400 116

Claimed score487,200

The station at K5TR:
 15 meters:
   - six element 36' boom Yagi at 70', rotatable
   - six element 36' boom Yagi at 35', fixed NE
   - four element Cushcraft Yagi at 50', fixed SE
   - two element Force 12 2/2 WARC band antenna at 60', fixed SE

 Radio 1:  Elecraft K3, Ameritron AL-1500
 Radio 2:  Elecraft K3, Ameritron AL-1500
 Headset:  Heil Proset Plus HC-4
 DVK:      W9XT Contest Card
 Software: TR Log 6.78
 Other:    Ameritron RCS-8V antenna switches, ICE bandpass
           filters, Top Ten Devices Band Decoders, homebrew
           audio switchbox

Thanks to George for letting me operate his station this weekend. Conditions were much improved over my last effort in the SOSB/15 category in 2009. My personal goal for the weekend was to do better than the NR5M M/M team's 15 meter totals from the CW DX contest two weekends ago. I was pretty sure I could do better than their QSO total, but I wasn't sure about the multiplier total. As it turns out, I matched their multiplier total in the final hour of the contest.

The opening to Europe seemed to be a lot better on day two than it was on day one. On the second day, I got the rate meter up close to 200 while working Europeans, but I never quite broke that barrier. The propagation was also better to northeast Europe and Scandinavia on the second day, allowing me to pick up many new multipliers.

Some common multipliers I missed included one big surprise: no XE station made it into the log! It seemed like there were hundreds of Mexican call signs on phone in the ARRL 10 Meter Contest, but I never heard one in this contest. I also missed out on 6Y, BV, CP, D4, HC, UA2, VR2, ZS, and a few others.

After dupes and W/VE calls, it looks like my raw QSO total came out to 1400 exactly. I could not have planned that if I had tried.

I had a lot of fun.


 

Contest Logging was done with TR LOG contest logging software. The following reports and log were created using TR LOG's post-contest processor.


Last Updated 26 June 2020
wm5r@wm5r.org