CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 35:55
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 1
80: 47
40: 1026
20: 1789
15: 147
10: 10
------------
Total: 3020 Prefixes = 1025 Total Score = 9,496,625
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Congrats to KL9A and N5DX for great performances, and for giving us a convincing
demonstration that cutting edge technology and operating techniques are the new
standard in radio contesting.
I happened to be chair of the CAC ten years ago when we advised the ARRL board
that remote operation was legal under the current contest rules and should
remain so. The CQ WW CC came to a similar conclusion. I think we all anticipated
that this would allow contesters to operate some of the great stations around
the world without leaving home, but somehow I didn’t picture multiple top
scores in major contests being taken by remotely operated stations. The future
is finally here, and I think it’s really cool.
And I guess I’m not at all up to speed on the latest operating craze: 2BSIQ.
After reading the posts from Chris and Kevin, I had to Google that term and
catch up. I’m still studying the detailed slide show from CT1BOH – it’s
kind of mind boggling that it’s possible to nearly double the QSO rate.
Dueling CQs isn’t new, and I’ve tried it on occasion, but I didn’t know
about the work being done on synchronized, interleaved QSOs. This is heavy
stuff, and clearly a significant competitive advantage for those who can master
what looks like a very challenging operating skill. Again, while I got my rear
end kicked by it this weekend, I think it’s really cool and I’m going to
have to try it.
Below is my rate sheet produced by CBS so you can compare it with the sheets
from KM7W and NN5J. The times when they were doing 2BSIQ are obvious. While
their rates on the main band were usually lower than mine, their overall rate
for each hour was substantially higher. No doubt that’s due in large part to
the size of the antennas and the skill of the operators, but it sure looks like
2BSIQ made a significant difference as well. As you might expect, 2BSIQ
massively increased the second radio QSOs. I suspect it was even more because I
think CBS underestimates second radio QSOs. It says I did 193 second radio QSOs,
but it was actually about 250 (Writlog keeps track of which radio made the QSO,
and I rarely switch the roles of my two radios.)
Bottom line for me is that we shouldn’t fear new developments in contesting.
While I do cherish the old “boy and his radio” days, we need to keep radio
contesting moving forward, pushing the envelope with every technology and
technique that we can. That’ll keep it fun and interesting.
That said, having done a mere “traditional” SO2R effort from my modest
location, I’m pretty happy with the results. Superior conditions had a lot to
do with that, along with a few strategies and tricks I’ve discovered in nearly
20 years of doing serious efforts in this contest. I maintain a spreadsheet with
statistics for my effort each year in WPX CW and that of the winner, and I
record the average solar flux, A-index and K-index that prevailed during the
contest. Early on Friday I printed my rate sheets for 2006-2009, when the solar
flux was in the range it is now. Just before the contest I saw that the A-index
and K-index were quite low, and no disturbances were forecast. The closest match
in solar and geomagnetic activity was 2009, which had slightly lower solar flux
but a similarly quiet geomagnetic field. So I decided to follow the break
strategy I used in 2009, which was pretty reasonable. Sure enough, my rates, QSO
totals, prefixes and score followed 2009 pretty closely, with peak rates, total
QSOs and total prefixes being a little higher this year, but the final score
being a little lower due to a slight difference in strategy.
Conditions were particularly good the first day, with lots of Russian and Asian
over-the-pole stations to work and very little noise on the low bands. It’s
great to hear BY, JT, BV, 9M, and DU coming in strong at the bottom of the
sunspot cycle. I had an unusually long JA run on 20 Saturday morning, though I
wasn’t able to get a late afternoon JA run going either day. WPX is mostly a
two-band contest, but this year it was more so because 10 and 15 weren’t open
to EU from here, and with my modest antennas on 80 I couldn’t run EU on that
band either. The second day wasn’t quite as good, though there were still some
decent over-the-pole openings. The usual decline in activity on the second day
and more thunderstorm noise on the low bands impacted rates quite a bit.
One oddity: I had 12 dupes in the space of about 10 minutes on 20 Sunday
morning. Most were stations that I’d worked the previous morning. I can’t
recall ever having so many dupes in such a short time, so I fear that they were
working someone else underneath me that I couldn’t hear. Not worried about
them of course, but I might have lost the non-dupes during that time because
they were working someone else. Usually I can tell when that happens because the
QSO timing is off, but that didn’t seem to be the case. I’ll have to see if
I can figure it out from the audio recording. I’m pretty sure that’s what
happened because several times during the contest I would pause in the middle of
a huge run and hear a barely audible station calling CQ underneath me. Either
they didn’t hear me call QRL? before I started running or plopped down on my
frequency because they couldn’t hear me running.
I didn’t have many frequency fights, but I did have to shoo off a few stations
who plopped down on my frequency and started calling CQ without asking QRL?. And
one time I had been running on what I thought was a clear frequency for five
minutes (I asked QRL? first), and got an angry transmission from someone who
said the frequency was occupied, told me to move up and called me a lid. Huh.
Lousy filters? Did he bump his VFO? Was name-calling really necessary?
Last year I decided to try Assisted in WPX CW for the first time. Glad I did
because conditions were rough and I wasn’t in the best shape for it. I only
managed about 20 hours, but still came in fifth USA, giving me some hope that a
full effort might put me on top or close to it. But while point-and-click
certainly reduced the fatigue factor, somehow it simply wasn’t as fun as
hunting for new QSOs/prefixes on the second radio while trying to go as fast as
I could on the run radio. So this year I decided to return to my roots and
entered SOAB HP.
And this is where the only small equipment glitch came into play. The rules now
require an audio recording from anyone qualifying for the top three, and having
been there several times in WPX CW I setup Writelog to record the contest, using
its default stereo audio format and no compression. I tested the recording and
both channels sounded OK. But after the contest I found that the recording had
been done in mono, combining the audio from both radios into the left channel.
The result was that the audio from my CQ on the run radio always obliterates the
audio from the S&P radio. Sometimes you can hear a stations answering me
when I switched both ears to the S&P radio, but most of the time nothing
from the second radio can be heard. After the contest I tried to reproduce the
error, but wasn’t able to. It’s a mystery.
Thanks for the QSOs, the prefixes and lots of fun. See you next time.
73, Dick WC1M
CALLSIGN: WC1M
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
CONTEST: CQ-WPX-CW
OPERATORS: WC1M
-------------- Q S O R a t e S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
0000 0 0 149 0 0 0 149 149 4.9
0100 0 2 129 4 0 0 135 284 9.4
0200 0 0 118 11 0 0 129 413 13.7
0300 0 0 108 10 0 0 118 531 17.6
0400 0 2 70 7 0 0 79 610 20.2
0500 1 14 67 0 0 0 82 692 22.9
0600 0 0 24 0 0 0 24 716 23.7
0700 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 716 23.7
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 716 23.7
0900 0 0 0 34 0 0 34 750 24.8
1000 0 0 1 129 0 0 130 880 29.1
1100 0 0 1 142 0 0 143 1023 33.9
1200 0 0 0 129 1 0 130 1153 38.2
1300 0 0 0 122 0 0 122 1275 42.2
1400 0 0 0 68 2 0 70 1345 44.5
1500 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1345 44.5
1600 0 0 0 51 9 0 60 1405 46.5
1700 0 0 0 84 3 1 88 1493 49.4
1800 0 0 0 64 3 0 67 1560 51.7
1900 0 0 0 72 2 1 75 1635 54.1
2000 0 0 0 48 0 0 48 1683 55.7
2100 0 0 1 81 0 0 82 1765 58.4
2200 0 0 11 38 0 0 49 1814 60.1
2300 0 0 68 21 0 0 89 1903 63.0
0000 0 0 78 8 0 0 86 1989 65.9
0100 0 12 49 10 0 0 71 2060 68.2
0200 0 1 48 4 0 0 53 2113 70.0
0300 0 10 12 7 0 0 29 2142 70.9
0400 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2142 70.9
0500 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2142 70.9
0600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2142 70.9
0700 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2142 70.9
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2142 70.9
0900 0 3 16 31 0 0 50 2192 72.6
1000 0 3 2 69 0 0 74 2266 75.0
1100 0 0 1 77 0 0 78 2344 77.6
1200 0 0 2 50 0 0 52 2396 79.3
1300 0 0 0 53 3 0 56 2452 81.2
1400 0 0 0 65 8 0 73 2525 83.6
1500 0 0 0 29 9 0 38 2563 84.9
1600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2563 84.9
1700 0 0 0 36 10 5 51 2614 86.6
1800 0 0 0 26 55 0 81 2695 89.2
1900 0 0 0 30 33 1 64 2759 91.4
2000 0 0 0 63 6 2 71 2830 93.7
2100 0 0 6 57 0 0 63 2893 95.8
2200 0 0 9 48 3 0 60 2953 97.8
2300 0 0 56 11 0 0 67 3020 100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 1 47 1026 1789 147 10 3020
Gross QSOs=3056 Dupes=36 Net QSOs=3020
Unique callsigns worked = 2352
The best 60 minute rate was 152/hour from 0002 to 0101
The best 30 minute rate was 170/hour from 0003 to 0032
The best 10 minute rate was 186/hour from 0002 to 0011
The best 1 minute rates were:
4 QSOs/minute 29 times.
3 QSOs/minute 258 times.
2 QSOs/minute 656 times.
1 QSOs/minute 818 times.
There were 394 bandchanges and 193 (6.4%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.
Number of letters in callsigns
Letters # worked
-----------------
3 28
4 1192
5 1146
6 598
7 26
8 15
9 9
10 6
Multi-band QSOs
---------------
1 bands 1757
2 bands 528
3 bands 62
4 bands 4
5 bands 1
6 bands 0
------- S i n g l e B a n d Q S O s ------
Band 160 80 40 20 15 10
----------------------------------------------
QSOs 1 9 474 1211 56 6
Antennas:
160M - trapped vee @90'
80M - delta loop @75, trapped vee @90'
40M - Cal-Av 2D-40A @110', 4-square
20M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 4-el @72'
15M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50', 5-el @50'
10M - 4/4/4 SteppIRs @96'/64'/34' on TICs, C3E @50'. 6-el @115'
Tower#1: Force 12 EF-610, Cal-AV 2D-40A, 4-el SteppIRs, 160/80 trapped vee
770-MDP: Force-12 EF-420
AB-577 #1: Force-12 EF-515
AB-577 #2: Force-12 C3E
Delta loop hung from a tree
dual 580' beverage aimed 20/220 degrees
Equipment:
Elecraft K3/P3 + Alpha 87A, Elecraft K3/P3 + Acom 2000A + Afedri SDR-Net on
unused antenna for third band scope, Writelog, YCCC SO2R Box, homebrew Windows
antenna switching/tuning software ("AntennaMaster"), HDSDR, iPad
running Touchmon USB for touch-screen "button box", K1XM MOAS II USB
Switch, TopTen and KK1L SO2R switches, Green Heron and Hy-Gain rotor
controllers, microHam Stack Switch and StackMax
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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