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N5XU participated in the ARRL Sweepstakes Collegiate Championships conducted during the weekend of 14-15 November 1998. We operated in the Multioperator Single Transmitter class, with KA5WSS, KM5FA, and KT5I operating. K5EJL visited Sunday morning.
This was yet another contest where I ended up with a hot soldering iron in hand less than an hour before the start. It was a pleasant surprise that everything worked. This was Kevin KT5I's first use of TR Log, which also worked out surprisingly well.
We got off to a much better start than last year. Sunday late morning's big solar flare hurt our rate badly for an hour. We had our sweep by 10:10 AM local on Sunday, fastest ever by several hours. I think tactically, we should have been calling CQ more on 40M Saturday night than we did, and we stayed too late on both 20M and 40M on Sunday night than we should have. At one point, we were over 120 QSOs ahead of where we had been at that point in time last year, but ended up only 73 QSOs better after all was said and done.
I had to give one person check 21 five times before he believed it. I think there were a LOT more calls whose section didn't match their call district than I remember there being last year. Made things a little more interesting, I guess.
Puerto Rico was the only section with which we had only one QSO. This is the first time since 1989 that N5XU has swept both CW and phone. 1989 was the last year that George K5TR operated Sweepstakes from the UTARC club station. (Unfortunately, the club neglected to submit its score to the League that year.)
The score below is unofficial.
| Band | QSOs | Points | Mults |
|---|---|---|---|
| 80SSB | 68 | 136 | 7 |
| 40SSB | 144 | 288 | 11 |
| 20SSB | 331 | 662 | 7 |
| 15SSB | 629 | 1254 | 54 |
| 10SSB | 59 | 118 | 0 |
| Total | 1231 | 2458 | 79 |
| Official score | 175,538 |
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Below is a graph comparing our 1997 and 1998 contest effort. Note that the rate in 1998 appears a lot more consistent than it was in 1997. There is no obvious explanation for the radically different changes in rate on Saturday night between the two years. Notice the kink in the 1998 rate late Sunday morning that corresponds with the major solar flare we experienced.
Contest Logging was done with TR LOG contest logging software. The following reports and log were created using TR Log's post-contest processor.
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Last Updated 26 June 2020 wm5r@wm5r.org |