W7ASU
2009 February School Club Roundup Results




While club member participation was good for the event, propagation did not cooperate. DX was almost nonexistent, and while we know there were many schools on, we heard few and talked with fewer. As a result, the majority of the contest was spent in digital modes, mainly PSK and RTTY. At the urging of Brian, WB6RQN/J79BPL, on the SCR reflector, we decided to try Olivia as a digital mode. The first 3 days we spent listening, hoping to hear something and confirm that we had everything set up correctly. Eventually we got brave and called CQ (at that point we had worked everyone we could hear on PSK, so there was plenty of time to play around with a new mode). It took 15 or 20 minutes before we had any takers. QSO's were slow, but we are proud to say we worked three people in this mode for the contest. Unfortunately, this didn't make up for the bad conditions all week; we ended up with our lowest score ever.

The week ended on a bad note when our temporary setup of our R7 vertical was red tagged by a building inspector and we were issued a stop work order, with instructions to remove the installation immediately. We have been installing this antenna at this and other locations on campus, with permission from ASU, for eight years! This leaves the club in a particularly dire situation as several years ago we were informed that we would not be allowed to install a permanent antenna on the building housing our hamshack. Now, we no longer have permission to erect a temporary antenna either. We are looking for a solution to the problem, but at this point are unsure if/when the club will be on the air again. Update: Although two months have passed, we are still no closer to understanding why the R7 antenna installation was rejected, nor how to resolve the problem for future events. We continue to work at cutting the beauracratic red tape.




Summary Sheet

Summary Sheet

Soapbox

"Well, it looks like we worked the 3 other people in the world set up for Olivia. Shall we switch back to PSK?" KC7MOD after watching W7OYA call CQ in Olivia for 20 minutes with no takers, working 3 stations back-to-back, and then going another 20 minutes with no responses.

"I like Olivia. I can keep up with typing in Olivia." W7OYA responding to complaints that the baud rate in Olivia is noticeably slower than in PSK.





Time Operated: 17:39

Operators

# of QSO's
% of QSO's
Op time
% of time
Avg QSO's/hr
KC7MOD (Nicholas) 106 45.1% 06:08 34.7% 17
KD7ZRK (Jason) 55 23.4% 03:55 22.1% 14
KD7NZK (David) 50 21.2% 04:45 26.9% 10
W7OYA (Nathan) 24 10.2% 02:51 16.1% 8
KG7FOX (Mark) 0 0.00% 00:00 Undefined Undefined

Loggers

Set up/Tear down

Score

Individual Phone QSO's 151
Individual Digital QSO's 61
Club Phone QSO's 5
Club Digital QSO's 0
School Phone QSO's 8
School Digital QSO's 10
KA2NRR Phone QSO's 0
KA2NRR Digital QSO's 0
States Worked 39
Provinces Worked 5
Countries Worked 5
QSO Points 306
Multiplier 149
Final Score 45,594

QSO Band Distribution

Band # of QSO's
20m 201
40m 33
80m 1

Average Contest Rate

14 QSO's / Hour

State QSO Distribution

State # of QSO's
Alabama 4
Alaska 4
Arizona 16
Arkansas 4
California 26
Colorado 8
Connecticut 3
Delaware 1
Florida 2
Georgia 0
Hawaii 2
Idaho 0
Illinois 19
Indiana 3
Iowa 5
Kansas 2
Kentucky 0
Louisiana 4
Maine 0
Maryland 0
Massachusetts 0
Michigan 5
Minnesota 7
Mississippi 5
Missouri 9
Montana 1
Nebraska 2
Nevada 2
New Hamshire 1
New Jersey 2
New Mexico 2
New York 2
North Carolina 2
North Dakota 1
Ohio 1
Oklahoma 1
Oregon 7
Pennsylvania 0
Rhode Island 0
South Carolina 2
South Dakota 1
Tennessee 2
Texas 16
Utah 4
Vermont 0
Virginia 2
Washington 26
West Virginia 0
Wisconsin 9
Wyoming 0
Total United States 215

Province QSO Distribution

Province # of QSO's
Alberta 4
British Columbia 9
Manitoba 1
New Brunswick 0
Newfoundland 0
Nova Scotia 0
Ontario 1
Prince Edward Island 0
Quebec 0
Saskatchewan 1
Other Territories 0
Total Canada 16

DXCC QSO Distribution

DXCC # of QSO's
Alaska 4
Hawaii 2
Mexico 5
Total DXCC QSO's
(Not including AK and HI)
5

Gallery


Nathan, W7OYA, and David, KD7NZK, work digital modes on their laptops while logging on the hamshack's computer.

By the end of the week, everyone who brought a laptop to the contest had some flavor of software running for copying digital QSO's, although some software proved unstable, difficult to compile/install, etc. Here, David, KD7NZK, and Nathan, W7OYA, are playing with different versions of fldigi running under different operating systems; David is running Linux while Nathan uses Mac OS X.

Poor propagation all week long meant mostly working digital modes. (Nathan, W7OYA, and David, KD7NZK)

Count the number of computers in this picture. The ratio of two computers for every one person seems about right, doesn't it? (David, KD7NZK, and Nathan, W7OYA)

The R7 in siloutte.

With practice, we've gotten better at installing the R7 at this location. The antenna went up both easily and safely the weekend before the contest.

These two hams are normally good friends, but tension mounted when Jason showed up for just a few hours and worked more stations than David had all week long! David did his best to catch up, but ultimately Jason squeaked by with a few more QSO's. (David, KD7NZK, and Jason, KD7RZK)

His shirt says it all. We weren't going to say anything, David, but now that you mention it... (David, KD7NZK, and Nathan, W7OYA)

Despite being a safe and ASU approved installation, the R7 was red tagged on the last day of the contest.

Why so glum? Because it is the end of the contest and W7ASU has set a record LOW score. (Jason, KD7RZK, David, KD7NZK, and Nathan, W7OYA)


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