CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: NW6P
Operator(s): W9KKN
Station: NW6P
Class: SO(A)AB HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 26
40: 62
20: 350
15: 77
10: 11
------------
Total: 526 Prefixes = 288 Total Score = 265,248
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
As always, special thanks to Tom (NW6P) for graciously hosting me at his
station. The remodeling of the shack is still in progress, but coming along
nicely.
When it comes to contesting, I feel like I almost have SSB and RTTY under
control, but I'm quite far from being a competent CW operator. It's something
I've been working on, and it's a goal of mine to improve considerably for 2018,
but it's got a long way to go. I went through CWops Academy Level 1 at the
beginning of the year, and I have Level 2 scheduled starting in September. But
even after that, I would always rely on some level decoding assistance during a
contest, either from Elecraft, CWGet, MRP40, FLdigi, whatever. Recently though,
I've had the desire to do better than that, and as much as I could over the last
month or two, I've been running MorseRunner, RufzXP, etc. in hopes of being able
to mutate into almost-contest-grade CW.
But at possibly everyone else's expense, and I'm profusely sorry if that
included you, I decided that learning to swim needed to involve jumping into the
ocean with the sharks. No decoding help (besides of course the packet cluster)
CQ WPX CW 2018, here we go. At the suggestion of a few people, I had relatively
little to lose here -- perhaps more than a few busted calls, serials, etc., but
I would almost certainly be better at this after the contest than I was before.
Living in a comfort zone should be against the rules in contesting.
My initial plan was to do this at home, with the attic dipole, low power, in
hopes that nobody would hear all of the mistakes I'd be sure to make, but due to
a snafu in getting my Flex Radio trade here on time, that wasn't going to
happen. Being realistic, this contest was not going to be a 48-hour iron-man
game, but instead a few extended MorseRunner sessions in
"super-realism" mode. So, I messaged NW6P Friday to see if I could
operate WPX from his QTH. Sure, he said, but the amplifier, radio, and all
associated parts are in boxes in a closet, and there's no furniture in the radio
room. After some laziness and hesitation, eventually, I went over there, put the
station together on a card table, and got to work.
How hard could this be? Well, how dare I suggest this, but propagation was
almost too good. Wow. Most of my HF experience has been during solar minimum,
but with the reach of Tom's station, with these conditions, it felt like every
CQ resulted in a pileup, and every station came back to me on the first try. I
had no idea what to do with all of this propagation, besides try to barely keep
up with the firehose of contest CW. I'm used to 20 meters dying as a clear
signal to move elsewhere. Europe is only supposed to be around at specific times
of the day.
Even though everyone had to repeat everything to me 3 or 4 times (sorry again)
before I copied it, I decided that running was a bit easier than S&P because
at least then I could slow the speed down and generally the callers would
follow. Over time, I felt I much improved, so goal interim achieved, but I still
have a long way to go. I'll see you in the next CW contest, and hopefully, by
then, I'll be able to better keep up with you.
73 & Thanks for the Q's (and extra patience), everyone!
-- Bill/W9KKN
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