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After more than one year of hard work, building all the antenna systems at D4C, our goal was reached for the 2008 CQ WW!
Most of the activity for our international team in 2007-2008 was antenna and shack building sessions, with some time for contesting.
Even with good scores in some of last year's events, the main goal was to be ready for the CQ WW SSB 2008.
We had planned a Multi-Two entry, but due to a last minute drop of some operators we moved into Multi-Single, which was really a blast!
We had spent the ten days before the contest working on the last four antennas, the temporary beverages to USA and EU and rebuilding the shack.
Everything was ready for Friday evening, so we got some rest and then the battle started at 0000z.
The low bands were really amazing, as our 3-element Delta Loop to US and Europe did a great job, with the first four hours at 160 QSO/hour.
Top band was in great shape too, the quarter wave vertical did a superb job, picking up every one we could listen to with the beverages, a real surprise at that latitude.
The first night went quickly and we reached our goal of 1,000 QSO's at 0600 GMT, a good start!
Daytime from D4C was dominated by the 15 meter band, all the world coming through strong, combined with some good signals on 10 meters, where we had a 400 QSO opening to Europe and collected a lot of multipliers without chasing them.
At sunset, it was time for 20 meters, and the multiplier guys were very busy on the low bands, as they moved good Pacific and Asia mults between 40 and 80 meters.
The first day ended at 4500 QSO's, as we were on our way for our target of 8500 QSO.
The second night went more slowly as expected, as we focused on Top Band with a good run over 150 QSO/hour, with the big highlight being a thrilling Zone 3 QSO in the log from NK7U.
The second day, the bands were in good shape too, even if there wasn't an opening to Europe on 10 meters. We were still waiting for an opening to the US, and the only option was at our last sunset.
It was a magic moment, with the sun setting in the shack windows, as we decided to QSY to 10 meters to try the US. We even moved some EU guys to 10m - it was quite late in Europe, but they were still loud, and after a few calls on the USA antenna, some signals showed up!
Just a few QSO's for our mults bag but enough for us, as we were happy to have moved at just the right time.
With a few hours left, we tried one last 40 meter run to squeeze the band, and more Far East mults appeared in the log. We took the chance to move them to 80 meters, and even with poor antennas most of them were pulled up from the QRM, a really remarkable moment.
The final score (21.7 million) is what we expected and forecast, as our main target was to beat the previous year's winning score, and we did that.
We are still waiting to see other top scores, but we are confident that we surely have done the most of what we could do and we had a lot of fun and camaraderie and the same time.
We are counting down the days to the next contest at D4C...ARRL DX and CQ WPX?
