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For the past number of years your webmaster and his cousin Don Cassel VE3BUC have participated in the SSB CQWW contest which is held the last full weekend in October.
The purpose of the contest is for amateurs around the world to contact other amateurs in as many zones and countries as possible. (The world is broken up into 40 zones.)
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| L-R: Don Cassel VE3BUC, Paul Cassel VE3SY, Brian Bigging VE3XA and Joe VE3WG. |
This year we were fortunate to have the help of Brian VE3XA and Joe VE3WG that provided enough operators to keep two stations operating for the full 48 hours of the contest. (Friday 8pm to Sunday 7pm allowing for the time change)
We started off on 10 metres which was still open to the South Pacific and 20 was open to Europe. Then about 2 hours later the new rotor packed in leaving the beam antennas pointing into the south west.
My trusty old DX77 verticle with it's ground radials buried in the septic tile bed was then pressed into service for Europe. We made sure plenty of 807s were consumed to maximize the ground conductivity on the ground radials.
Murphy continued to intervene as the hydro failed about 3am for close to an hour leaving us visiting by candle light and enjoying a few cool 807. (for the newer members an 807 tube resembles the old style beer bottles while an 813 tube resembled a liquor bottle)
On Saturday, Ben VA3BNY
visited the station to take the photos on this page and was pressed into
tower service to manually rotate the beams back on Europe.
The adjacent photo shows Ben on his way up the tower to point us at Europe. Thanks Ben.
We ended up with the
following stats:
CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST -- 2000 Call: VE3SY Operators: VE3SY, VE3BUC, VE3XA, VE3WG Category: Multi Multi Power: High Power Band: All Band Mode: SSB Country: Canada Zone: 4 BAND QSO QSO PTS PTS/QSO ZONES COUNTRIES 160 191 367 1.92 7 7 80 632 1136 1.80 12 31 40 490 1008 2.06 20 52 20 491 1220 2.48 30 92 15 573 1501 2.62 34 115 10 487 1306 2.68 24 95 --------------------------------------------------- Totals 2864 6538 2.28 127 392 => 3,393,222
Don VE3BUC provided the following quick summary.
62.6% of our contacts were from North America, 25.8% from Europe, 5.3% from South America and the rest from Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
Our highest QSO rate was 163 at 0400Z on Friday night. For the weekend there were a total of 8 hour slices with a rate over 100 Qs.
The lowest rate was 1 QSO at 2300Z on Saturday. I think we were having dinner about then so one of the cats must have made the contact. hi hi.
The first 24 hours we made 1822 Qs. The second 1042. Not bad for the second day. In 1998 we made only 1091 Qs for the whole contest.
We made DXCC only on 15.
6 band sweep for K, V2, VE, and XE. We had YV on 160m but for some reason missed it on 10.
The file on the number of pieces of pie and beers consumed was missing for some unexplained reason and so I am unable to report on those numbers.Don
Anyone interested in contesting should come out to Field Day which is the last weekend in June.
Paul
VE3SY
paul@ve3sy.com