Ken Harker WM5R
1997 CQ World Wide DX Contest, Phone - KM5FA (@ N5XU)

This was the first time I've operated the CQ World Wide DX Contest, phone. I made some QSOs during the CQWW CW contest in 1996, making maybe 50 QSOs, mainly hunting for new countries (which wasn't hard, as I had just upgraded from Tech+ a few weekends beforehand.) This was intended to be a fairly casual effort on my part, although I ended up operating a little longer than I had intended. Even so, I still don't do mornings :-)

By far, the biggest limiting factor in my performance was the failure of the Kenwood TS-830S's external VFO. The week before, it had been acting up, with the displayed frequency offset by 300kHz, but when I first tried to use it this weekend it just stuck on .690 regardless of band, mode, or receive/transmit selections, rendering it just a little useless. Being unable to work split on phone, I didn't even bother with 40M, and decided to concentrate on 20M, 15M, and 10M.

One of my informal goals was, of course, working all-time new countries for my DXCC totals. All-time new countries for me were 5Z Kenya, CY0 Sable I., DU Phillipines, FP St. Pierre & Miquelon, HI Dominican Republic, KH2 Guam, VP2E Anguilla, and ZL7 Chatham I. A pretty good haul. There were a couple that I missed out on, though; I was not able to break through the pileup for FR Reunion Island for one. I was also disappointed at not finding more Asian stations on the air. With the exception of JAs, I only found one Russian and one Korean station to work. I was really hoping for one BY or BV or maybe a VR2 or XX9.

One thing I did not expect at all was the number of U.S. stations that would answer my CQs. Granted, they could have been working me for the country or zone multiplier credit, but the zone multipliers at least were easily acquired through VE QSOs, which also counted for QSO points. I suspect a substantial number of the domestic stations who called me were non-combatants unaware that their QSO was yielding me 0 points. Still, I expect an analysis of the log in front of an on-line callbook will help me find some new state/band/mode counters for my WAS and 5BWAS effort.

While it wasn't a goal of mine at all, I was rather excited to work two new countries on top band: V2 Antigua & Barbuda and PJ2 Netherlands Antilles. There seemed to be fairly good activity from the Caribbean, with only ZF Cayman Is., J7 Dominica, HK0 Malpelo I., VP2M Montserrat, and YV0 Aves I. without activity. Possibly I could have worked more countries on top band had I decided to spend less time sleeping.

Strangess of note: I heard exactly one station in zone 1 and two stations in zone 2. I somehow managed to completely miss JA on 10M. Favorite callsigns worked: DX1S, TE5T, and AB0ZO.

Contest Logging was done with TR Log contest logging software. The following reports and log were created using TR Log's post-contest processor. It should be fairly obvious from the rate sheet which hours I took off entirely, and which evening hours I spent partially eating dinner.

• Continent Distribution
• Zone Distribution
• Multipliers Worked
• Rate Sheet
• The Contest Log