CQWW WPX Contest, SSB
Call: 8P5A
Operator(s): W2SC
Station: 8P5A
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Barbados
Operating Time (hrs):
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 162
40: 1288
20: 2665
15: 1160
10: 0
------------
Total: 5275 Prefixes = 1186 Total Score = 18,564,458
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
It was a week where nothing was easy.
I knew that posting a fourth consecutive win was going to be difficult in the
face of formidable competition so my focus was on trying to break my North
American record.
Unfortunately a strange sequence of events got in the way -
- Got an E-Mail from K5ZD saying WPX SSB was 36 hours away. I was still in
Miami at the time. Did not get to the station until late Thursday
- We had a fight with the credit card company who insisted that our purchases
from Barbados were fraudulent.
- Our baby sitter came home hours late one day and my son had to cook his own
dinner.
- An intermittent 40 meter beam had me on the tower Friday morning in the rain
removing and replacing the driven element.
Then there was the contest itself . . .
It started well. Last year, I opened on 20 and made 5 Qâ??s before having to
move to 40. This year, I put 100 in the log before trying to make a hole in
40. At 0045Z, the power went out. In total darkness, I went to the car and
tried to sleep in the front seat while my wife read from her Kindle with a
flashlight. She eventually left me behind and went back to the house. I
rested with my head on the operating desk waiting for the power to return and
thinking about possibly changing categories. It came back two hours later so I
stayed with the original plan. With 12 hours of off time, it was not fatal, but
they were not the two hours I would have chosen. It was frustrating to be
giving numbers hundreds behind WM5R and VE3EJ.
40 was bursty all night but 80 was awful, signals were down and noise levels
were high. I could never get anything going on that band. 20 was generally in
good shape but it was impossible to break through into EU in the morning despite
very strong signals. There was virtually no 15 meter propagation into EU and I
worked 900 fewer EU stations than last year.
Nonetheless there were some good runs to the US, which were a lot of fun.
The good news is, despite stormy weather all weekend, the radios, antennas, and
rotors worked flawlessly.
Thanks to all for the Qâ??s, and to my wife, Kathleen, for all of her support.
73, Tom W2SC 8P5A
QSL via LOTW and NN1N
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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