ARRL DX Contest, CW 2005

Call: DL1IAO
Operator(s): DL1IAO
Station: DF0CG

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: JO31CQ
Operating Time (hrs): 41.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:  116    30
   80:  320    46
   40:  670    52
   20:  754    56
   15:  917    56
   10:   69    24
-------------------
Total: 2846   264  Total Score = 2,254,032

Club: Bavarian Contest Club

Comments:

TS870 & FT1000D (2nd RX) + PA, Writelog v10.52F on HP Omnibook XE3

(160) DP @30m
 (80) DP @28m
 (40) 3el KLM @33m
 (20) 5/5 @30/18m
 (15) 5/5 @34/25m on a windmill tower (still cannot believe this)
 (10) 5el Yagi @30m (broken)

* All of the above, with the exception of 10m, were fixed to ~310deg.

 (RX) 160m Beverage (did not seem to work during 2nd night - propagation?)

*** Many thanks to Markus/DJ7EO, Peter/DB6JG and Thorsten/DO1ET for having me at
their impressive station, and for wiring up a lot of hardware (both in- and
outside) for just a one weekend Guest-Op entry! ***

The expected operator was Ben DL6FBL but he could not make it for the weekend. 
When Ben and Markus invited me to jump in I got really excited about inspecting
and firing up this site for a DX contest, and meeting the people who make it
happen.

Apart from operating I was amazed seeing all the solid engineering and work
going into the place, and for sure I will never forget climbing up *inside* the
windmill tower holding up the 15m stack.

The contest had a couple of unexpected moments and was a lot of fun to operate. 
Markus, Peter and Thorsten would regularly show up in the shack to see how I'm
doing or to keep me excited. 40m was a dead band for most of the first night,
so things started out unexpectedly slow. Also, the first ~2000 Q's always
seem to come real quick in this contest, but then it's a struggle from DL. 
However, Ben had indicated that 15m will be special and it was just like that. 
Although trying constantly and hard I fell back with multipliers on 10m. One
could argue that this must be due to the broken 10m Yagi, but I probably simply
missed the best minutes of the opening. Price to pay for sticking with 1 radio
this time. Well, I do favour the idea that the opening possibly peaked better
elsewhere...

There were some minor hardware-associated issues which probably let me sound
like a LID a few times, but too minor to seriously affect the score or level of
fun. One of them was my incompetence of setting up the PTT switching fast
enough so I would not constantly miss the first letter of the other stationīs
call.  

Thanks for calling in and congratulations in advance to some outstanding scores
from EU.


73,

Stefan
DL1IAO@contesting.com
http://www.dl1iao.com