Around 0130, things swung north with a bunch of Minnesota QSOs along with VE4VV and W0SD. It wouldn't stay there for long though - swinging down to Florida at 0200. The supply of Florida signals finally petered out around 0400. Grabbed a (late!) dinner, then worked two more stations before hitting the hay with 134 in the log.
I woke up around 1000Z - a lack of sleep that would haunt me later in the contest. I'd forgotten to turn down the radio; when the scatter signals began to come in in the morning they woke me up. (even though the headphones were still plugged in) Chased them for a few minutes, but with low power it wasn't working - I was being buried in QRM. Went back to bed.
Until 1300. After a handful of quick CW QSOs, I switched to phone and went to the races. Almost all S&P, but very good rates. A YB0 showed up long-path at 1320, but the pileup was too big to bother with. Some interesting signals around this time: UT7DK had a CB-style echo on his CQ loop. (but his live audio was fine) After switching to CW, LY4AA had a kind of backwave - whenever he switched to transmit there was a continuous carrier about 200Hz above his signal. Strange. One QSO got scratched at 1337; he just wasn't going to ID.
I concentrated on CW, working 180 QSOs until just before 1600z when I switched to SSB. Again mostly S&P but again very good rates. Worked out the rest of the European opening on phone, switching back to CW at 2000z. There was an hour of offtime towards the end of this period, spent taking a QSL card to the post office. (by bicycle, 10 miles round-trip.)
It was now mostly domestic - with considerable success on backscatter. The JA's reappeared around 2200, though things were still mostly domestic. At 2250z I worked KA5PQD/N - the first Novice I've worked in this contest in years. And yes, TR did properly score him for 8 points.
Around midnight UTC, I began noticing some of the W1 stations were no longer on backscatter. Sporadic-E, and to New England at that! Stuck with it on phone for an hour, but when I worked Pennsylvania I knew this was a good opening - and I needed those W1/W2/W3 mults on CW. Switched to code. 71 QSOs in the 0100-0200 hour. New mults: NJ, NY, NH, MD, DC, RI, WV. Not bad. Tried more phone at 0200 but only landed three QSOs and two mults. Went to the grocery store; baked & ate a pizza.
Back at 0400. Now, it was a dialful of Texas. Apparently double-hop, as the California stations that had disappeared three hours ago were back. But only some of them. L.A. seemed to be in, but San Francisco missing. The Texans finally disappeared a bit after 0500z and it was back to bed.
Up at 1300z. But still wore out. Decided to concentrate on SSB this morning, as I had on CW yesterday. Rewarded with three nice quick mults 7P8ZZ (who seemed to be relieved someone actually answered his CQ!), 4X4DZ, and 9H0A. Again rates were decent and I got some running in. In the strange signals department... F8AAN's CQ loop. Sounded like it was recorded by a robot with a French accent. Bizarre.
Switched to CW at 1520. Promptly worked TF3W (third Iceland QSO in this contest - a record?) and VO1MP. (after missing the sweep in SS by VO, they seem to be mocking us in the later contests{grin}!)
Around 1600 I almost quit.
After reaching the top of the CW band I dropped back to the bottom and then started tuning upwards. 28006 was open. Nobody there. Listened for a second - really, honestly, there was nobody there. "QRL?" Listen for another second. Still nobody there. "CQ TEST W9WI". Nobody runs me off. I actually get a bit of a run going. Then, after five or six QSOs...
"CQ TEST CQ TEST N2OW N2OW TEST". Dead on top of me. S7. He DAMN WELL KNOWS I'm there. (later proven by working him. No, it was a dupe.) It burns me up these lids can cheat like this and get away with it. Unfortunately, I suppose that, like CBers above 28MHz - thunderstorm QRN - jammers on 75 - and Murphy's intervention in our equipment -- that cheating lids in W2 will always be with us.
(I note I've never had a W6/W7 try to pull something like that.)
Checked my email - sent a potentially inflammatory but absolutely true post to CQ-Contest - took a shower - dressed - ate lunch - and finally around 1700 cooled down enough to dare to get back on the air. Cooled off the rest of the way at 1723z:
10CW 15-Dec-02 17:23 1069A M6T 599 599 1361 G 4$ 10CW 15-Dec-02 17:24 1070A DL1IAO 599 599 1361 DL 4$ ; 15-Dec-02 17:24 : what are the chances of that?! (two #1361 in a row...)I can see getting #1 from two stations in a row. #1361 is another story!
At 1900z I decided to switch to the bottom of the band and typed "28000" in the callsign window - promptly QSYing the radio to the bottom of the band. I was used to hearing the clicks of the guy CQing at the bottom of the band. If he was particularly strong I might even hear a very weak signal powering itself around the IF filter.
Not this time. I heard a well-known W6 station (who I won't name as I'm sure the violation was unintentional) - S4 and clear. He seemed to zero-beat on 27999.7. Really I think that's just fair payback to the CBers who feel they're justified in using channels above 28MHz. But I'm sure Riley would feel otherwise. Tuned up the band a bit - and found the same W6 1100Hz higher and 20dB over S9. (I would later find another spur 1100Hz the other side of the same station. For some reason it didn't seem to be there at 1900.)
Tried, and succeeded, at eliminating any possibility of receiver shortcomings here. With 30dB of attenuation kicked in I could still hear the spur. And it dropped in strength in proportion to the amount of attenuation. (if it was an intermodulation product in the receiver it would drop faster than the amount of attenuation in place) There were other stations (K4RO, K4WX, many W7's...) on the band who were a whole lot stronger than 20dB over S9 and who could only be heard on their intended frequency. This spur was really being transmitted.
On a vaguely similar vein, at 2200z I noted N7MAL calling CQ on CW. "Mal" is "Bad" in Spanish. Truth in advertising, if applied to N7MAL's signal. Haven't heard a chirp like that since the demise of the USSR.
2223z; I heard a British-accented YL operator say "QRZed". She was being prompted by someone in the background - it took a few exchanges before she realized I was a dupe. At that time I didn't know, as she hadn't IDd yet... Turns out it was W4/G4BUE. Chris' XYL sure sounds an awful lot like the Queen...
I'd been trying to work 50 or 100 QSOs on one mode, then switch. I'd gone from 550 to 600 on SSB, but it was getting awfully close to the end of the contest and I really wanted 900,000 points. Switched to CW at 2345. Unfortunately I didn't quite make it. (I'm sure log-checking will leave me even further from that goal...)
Anyway, it was interesting. Made a lot of QSOs, will probably get a pretty good handful of QSLs. IMHO that's a lot of what it's about: helping someone else towards whatever award they're working on.
As some of you know, I try to keep a book in the shack to help stay awake when things get slow. Unfortunately, I screwed up in this category in this contest, in two ways.
First, I bought a copy of Citizen Soldiers, by Stephen E. Ambrose. This was an excellent work. Too excellent; I couldn't put it down, and had finished reading before the contest even started. Now, given the book's name, I had expected to hear more right out of the mouths of enlisted men and less from officers. But still, it was a well-told and well-written story. A story of the less-dramatic but at least equally (if not more) important units that don't seem to get as much play in the movies. Read it.
So, on Friday I picked up another book. IBM and the Holocaust, by Edwin Black. It was a disappointment.
Now, this was an important and interesting story. The point Black makes, and backs up, is that an IBM subsidiary in Germany provided data-processing equipment that was instrumental in the success (from the Nazi point of view) of the Holocaust. And that IBM executives in New York knew what was being done with their equipment, and did nothing to stop it. That's important to know. Someone needed to tell it.
The mechanics of this book, however, were distracting. I'm not used to seeing that many typos in a serious work of literature. Passages were repeated, sometimes more than once. On at least two occasions, after setting the book down and picking it back up, I had to double-check my bookmark. I thought I'd somehow gone back & begun re-reading something I'd already read. No - Black had written the exact same phrase again. In one place, the same sentence appeared twice on the same page.
The other thing I felt lacking was a study of the behavior of other American corporations during World War II. Either:
I'd give this book a miss.