CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 42.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 49 12 30
80: 272 17 73
40: 258 22 92
20: 780 39 137
15: 1461 35 130
10: 1142 31 120
------------------------------
Total: 3962 156 582 Total Score = 8,311,356
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
WOW! Quite a weekend. I knew that it would be a real propagation
roller-coaster when cndx were just INCREDIBLE on Wednesday and Thursday before
the contest, so I also knew, from experience, that we would get nailed by flares
and aurora DURING the contest! The only question was how long would the great
cndx last on Friday? Well, for New England, NOT VERY LONG!
At about 0015z we got the first or MANY flares. Unaware of this, I decided to
start the contest on 15, run some JA's and S & P for Pacific and then fight it
out on 20 as cndx deteriorated. This turned out to be a mistake. The flare
promptly made 15 disappear in New England (while allowing for amazing runs in
the Mid-West) and by the time I suspected a flare, 20 was just insane. No
chance to cq or run. Lots of S & P on 20, 40 and 80 for the next few hours.
Thanks to the flare, 20 quickly shut down. 40 and 80 were horribly noisy and
made running nearly impossible, even though the low-band cndx sounded quite
good. Even the beverages were terribly noisy, with 80 sounding more like it
usually does in JULY! At Eu sunrise, cndx deteriorated further with pitiful
runs aided by lots of S & P. Even with 2 radios at EU sunrise, I was struggling
to average 35 q's per hour! Yes, that C9.7 flare was just killing me!
With the SF higher and the Sunspots even higher, there WAS a good Pacific/Africa
opening on 20 which I pounced on. I listened to the West Coast run EU and Asia
while I struggled to hear any EU at all! I continued to rotate through all the
bands at about 15 minute intervals and at 0830 I caught a very short but
excellent LP opening on 20. It is the ONLY time that I heard XX9C, T88QQ,
VK0DX, VK6APH, all weekend on 20! I also heard a few OH's LP and
then, most amazingly, I worked GI1W LONGPATH on 20! In 30+ years of contesting
I had never heard a G Longpath from the Northeast!
After rotating through the bands again, I knew that I would have to sleep. I
had been awake since 3 AM Friday morning after my 5 year old daughter woke me up
twice with nightmares. I was unable to get back to sleep and knew that I would
pay for that in the contest.
I rested for an hour (unable to fall asleep) and thought that I would be able to
run on 20 starting at 1030z. Cndx were poor and I felt puny weak. There was no
run and I would just have to mark time and hope for the best on 15.
With the poor cndx thus far I had decided to really concentrate on mults since
the rates were so low. I had hoped that 15 would open well and then I could
focus on rate and forget about mults for a while. Unbeknownst to me, the reason
that 20 was so poor, was because we had had ANOTHER MASSIVE flare, an
X1.2! which was now depressing cndx on 20 and 15. Finally, 15 got going about
12z but was erratic and without the important Northern EU and Russian opening.
At 13z 10 meters began to perk up and at 14z I left a now-HOT 15 for 10. I was
loathe to leave 15 after a 215 hour, but it was clear that 10 would be open only
for a very short time for me and I needed ALL the EU mults!
After about 1.5 hours of run on 10, another flare terminated my hopes and I went
back to 15 for a few good hours. With another minor flare about 18z, the rate
dropped in half and then rebounded for the next few hours, but with clearly
impaired cndx. I debated how to handle a possible JA run on 15. Should I sit
and run or use possibly only opportunity to S & P for all those hard to find
Pacific and Asian mults on 10, 15 and 20? Well I decided to do a bit of both.
I found a JA on 10 (there were more) but heard very few Pacific. Cndx were just
not good enough. 15 was productive to JA but I was not able to get any of the
ususal good mults to call me. 20 was almost useless.
At about 23z I decided to leave the Ja's on 15 and concentrate on all those over
the pole mults on 20. This was a good decision as I quickly found a group of
rare mults that I never heard again: 9G5OO, VR2BG, JW5E, HS0ZEE, and JT1C.
At 0000z Sunday, and despite what had been pretty mediocre cndx, I had 38 zones
on 20. I really wanted all 40 since only once before had a SOAB entrant
(K1TO)ever worked 40 zones on one band. With only Zones 21 and 22 remaining, I
felt pretty confident I could do it. I mean how difficult could it be to work a
VU2 and A61AJ after you worked all kinds of rare African and Pacific stations?
My 24 hour total was a disappoinging 2138 q's but a solid 586 mults. I was
especially happy with the mult total given that I was largely unable to hear or
work the Pacific and Asian on any band. However, 3.1 meg did not augur well for
a competitive score, especially when "the usual suspects" to my South and West
seemed to be enjoying productive runs on bands that were almost dead for me!
I had gotten used to the constant flaring by now. About every 2-3 hours, we
would get another C Class flare like clockwork and the bands would quiet down as
the signal strengths faded. I relentlessly tuned and hunted everything on 40,
80, and 160. I decided to take some off-time at about 03z with the idea of
getting on again just before EU sunrise. I had now been up for about 44 hours
and was exhausted, but STILL I couldn't sleep. After an hour rest, I got back
on about 05z and immediately was surprised by how loud everyone was on 40 & 80
with a much lower qrn level that the night before. I had decent runs (for me)
on 40 and 80 with a bunch of mults on 160. Even though the EU stations seemed
to be having a lot of trouble copying on 160, I made the most of it and wound up
with 30 countries. Spending a few days outside fixing the 160 phased Inverted
L's, had surely helped! At about 0830, I was unable to run on 40 and I heard
the beginnings of a decent EU opening on 20. I tried to run to no avail and
realized that I better get some more sleep or I else I would be in deep trouble
at Sunrise. I went to sleep after being up for almost 50 hours!
After a refreshing (HA!) 1 hour nap, I decided to use a much stronger coffee. I
had been drinking a lot of coffee since Friday night and not once had becomen
even a tiny bit more awake as a result. I thought that just maybe, I had
accidentally marked CAFFEINATED on what was a decaf bag of coffee. So I
switched to a KNOWN source of caffeinated coffee. There was NO DIFFERENCE!
Apparently I was so tired that my body was not responding to any caffeine, the
first time that I can ever remember that happening.
Fortuntately, my subconscious knew what to do. CALL CQ CONTEST! Depite
relatively few q's on 20, I was not able to run much. Even worse, I was not
able to run much on 15, by far my strongest band. THIS WAS BAD! Although the
auroral oval was down to a relatively decent 4 from 8-9 the day before, we had
just had another flare. UGH! With about 1100q's on 15 and about 280 on 10, I
realized that I would have to go to 10 and "sit there" no matter how bad cndx
were. While I was still running on 15, I was hunting mults on 10 and 20 and I
found Robert, S53R, at A61AJ. HE WAS REALLY LOUD! I asked him to qsy for me to
20 and he did! Only Zone 22 to go on 20 for all 40! I continued to run on 15,
which was improving and then at 1230z decided it was now or never on the quiet
10 meter band.
I found one of my favorite frequencies and hoped for the best. What happened
next was just AMAZING! After a few minutes of "warming up the frequency", it
was off the the races. I HAD A *** 271 *** hour! which included 8 in one
minute, 21 q's in 3 minutes and 55 q's in 10 minutes. While I once had an
11 minute! and hours approaching 400 from the Caribbean, I had never broken 230
in a DX contest from stateside before! With fairly low-signal strenghts, but
on a relatively clear freq. (depite a very strange noise that kept coming and
going), I worked almost 700 q's in a little over 3 hrs! INCREDIBLE!
During this time I VU2SDU called me on 10 for a double mult. I immediately
passed him to 20 confident that this would be my 40th zone. NO LUCK!
ARRGGHHHH!
With improving conditions, I thought that I would have decent runs from 16z till
about 21z on 10, 15 and 20 with a decent run on 15 until the last hour, and
surely in that time A52CDX or another VU would call in on 10, 15 or 20. I was
now thinking about the possibility of 4300 q's and with my high mult, the
possibility of breaking 9 meg! and a new US record.
But I didn't get to seriously consider that for very long as at about 1630z we
had another flare and the auroral noise on 10 got up to S9! Unlike like most
short-lived flares, the auroral noise did not go away and I was unable to notch
or noise blanker it out. After another 30 minutes of frustration, I gave up and
went to 15 where the noise was WORSE! You can see from my rate sheet how much
this hurt my rate in the 17z hour. In the 18z hour, signals got a bit louder
and it was a bit easier to copy through the never-ending auroral noise, but at
19z my only option was 20 as the signal were weak and covered by the noise. I
am not particularly loud on 20, so when cndx are marginal or the band is packed,
I am not able to run very well. Another flare at 1959z ended my 20 meter run.
I "limped" into the last few hours trying to break 8 meg (with the 9 meg dream
blown away a few hours before) and chased everything on the bands with 2
radios.
It was SLOOOOWWWWWW and frustrating. I worked a few JA's and pacific stations
on 15 and heard a bunch of double mults on 10, but I had no chance of being
heard.
In New England, when you hear XX9C about S2, and there is a pileup of Southern,
Mid-Western and West Coast stations, you will NOT be heard. Same with VR2, KH0,
KH2, BY and quite a few other mults! 15 was equally futile with no chance at
the 9V1, YB, XX9, BD, or the VK9 that started to cq on top of my run freq!
I knew that cndx were good in the last hour and I was missing easy double mults
on all bands, so at 2330z I decided to take a chance and stop running and focus
on working mults. While it was fun Dxing it was unproductive and in the last 30
minutes I ONLY worked UP5G on 40, but it WAS a double mult and he was LOUD!
I ended the contest with 3962 q's 156 zones 582 countries and a claimed score of
8,311,356. The 8.3 meg was my personal best and I was happy that with
considerably poorer cndx than in 2002, I had improved by score by 200k and had
only 2 fewer mults! The 8.3 meg, while a new US record, will likely not survive
the log-checking process.
While I was disappointed that cndx did not hold up long enough for a new record,
or 40 zones on 20, I was thrilled that cndx were so good for this late in the
cycle and that the activity of the DL and G stations in particular, was just
FABULOUS!
There was one REALLY special moment in this contest. On Sunday, V47KP, with Joe,
K3NM operating, stopped by to ask me how I was doing. At that moment, my
daughter Melissa (age 5) and my XYL Barbara came into the shack. I told Melissa
that it was Joe and her face lit up. Then I asked her if she wanted to say "Hi"
to him and she started to jump up and down with excitement. I got such a kick
out of listening to Joe and Melissa talk to each other! It was a great moment
and I will never forget it!
Congrats to all the high scorers including W9RE, K4ZW and K3LR with great
efforts! It was nice to see Gator (N5RZ) back at K5ZD. I hope that he comes
back next year as well!
Thanks to the many stations who were kind enough to qsy for me including, D4B,
A61AJ, V6A, 5R8FU, EA6UN, IS0LLJ, OX2KAN, 5B4XF, PJ7/K3TC, 9H1DE and many, many
others!
Thanks for all the q's and the great time that I had this weekend!
73
Bob KQ2M kq2m@earthlink.net
BREAKDOWN QSO/mults KQ2M CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST Single Operator
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 HR TOT CUM TOT
0 ..... ..... ..... 38/31 42/15 1/2 81/48 81/48
1 . . 16/17 59/29 5/5 . 80/51 161/99
2 . 20/23 1/1 32/17 . . 53/41 214/140
3 5/9 . 36/20 15/10 . . 56/39 270/179
4 1/1 21/13 17/2 8/9 . . 47/25 317/204
5 7/4 35/6 . 8/7 . . 50/17 367/221
6 6/5 17/9 20/15 2/1 . . 45/30 412/251
7 2/2 15/5 17/14 5/3 . . 39/24 451/275
8 ..... 8/11 10/6 9/7 ..... ..... 27/24 478/299
9 2/1 5/5 1/2 . . . 8/8 486/307
10 2/3 . 2/3 14/6 1/2 . 19/14 505/321
11 . . 3/3 52/5 29/18 4/6 88/32 593/353
12 . . . 2/1 156/27 12/10 170/38 763/391
13 . . . . 207/12 8/8 215/20 978/411
14 . . . . 1/0 102/44 103/44 1081/455
15 . . . . 56/9 71/4 127/13 1208/468
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... 178/8 ..... 178/8 1386/476
17 . . . . 132/7 22/12 154/19 1540/495
18 . . . 1/0 79/1 26/8 106/9 1646/504
19 . . . 12/3 112/10 11/4 135/17 1781/521
20 . . . 131/8 20/11 1/2 152/21 1933/542
21 . . . 82/3 9/5 9/6 100/14 2033/556
22 . . . 11/5 55/8 4/4 70/17 2103/573
23 . . . 16/9 3/2 16/2 35/13 2138/586
0 2/2 3/0 10/6 9/5 1/0 ..... 25/13 2163/599
1 1/0 1/0 39/10 1/0 . . 42/10 2205/609
2 4/1 41/4 5/1 . . . 50/6 2255/615
3 . 4/0 . . . . 4/0 2259/615
4 2/2 . . 1/1 . . 3/3 2262/618
5 6/6 60/8 . . . . 66/14 2328/632
6 7/4 35/1 1/1 1/1 . . 44/7 2372/639
7 . 1/0 55/6 5/0 . . 61/6 2433/645
8 1/1 5/4 18/1 7/0 ..... ..... 31/6 2464/651
9 . . . . . . . 2464/651
10 1/1 1/1 3/2 22/0 . . 27/4 2491/655
11 . . 1/1 70/3 24/0 . 95/4 2586/659
12 . . . 2/3 63/1 119/12 184/16 2770/675
13 . . . . 1/2 239/11 240/13 3010/688
14 . . . 1/1 1/1 155/4 157/6 3167/694
15 . . . . . 188/0 188/0 3355/694
16 ..... ..... ..... 2/2 2/2 124/3 128/7 3483/701
17 . . . 3/3 51/2 14/1 68/6 3551/707
18 . . . . 110/3 6/4 116/7 3667/714
19 . . . 87/1 23/2 3/0 113/3 3780/717
20 . . . 55/1 8/7 1/1 64/9 3844/726
21 . . . 11/0 44/5 1/1 56/6 3900/732
22 . . . 6/1 37/0 4/0 47/1 3947/733
23 . . 3/3 . 11/0 1/2 15/5 3962/738
DAY1 25/25 121/72 123/83 497/154 1085/140 287/112 ..... 2138/586
DAY2 24/17 151/18 135/31 283/22 376/25 855/39 . 1824/152
TOT 49/42 272/90 258/114 780/176 1461/165 1142/151 . 3962/738
BREAKDOWN in mins/QSO's per hr KQ2M CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST Single Operator
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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