CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2019
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 35.3
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 192
40: 904
20: 1535
15: 252
10: 9
------------
Total: 2892 Prefixes = 1017 Total Score = 8,925,192
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Not how I planned it - so what else is new? The usual 30 hours of sleep in the
week leading up to the contest - no time to set up, no time to fix antennas. At
6 PM on Friday I just wanted to go to sleep. ;-)
My 80 meter 4-square was on the ground and in pieces so with ZERO sunspots it
meant 40 or bust.
I found a good freq. and I was ready to rip. Well.... maybe not. Signals were
weak and watery except from Russia - where there was a pipeline. Hmmm... Go to
20? Nah, should have lots of guys calling me on 40. Hmmm.... Well, maybe not.
Keep plugging away and the band should open. Hmmm..... Maybe not. 00z was 132
q's down significantly from last year and the years before that. Then the
bottom really fell out. Struggled to run guys with watery and weak signals with
no improvement. Ok, I get it, everyone is on 20. So I started to do some 2BSIQ
on 20 and 40 around 0130z - ok that's better rate up to 100/ hr. But wait...
with 2BSIQ at the beginning of the contest the rate should be MUCH higher. Not
much calling me except for some interesting Asiatic Russian prefixes on 20 while
I am attempting to run on 40 but 40 meter signals are still mostly weak.
Whatever I am doing is not working even though I spend 2 hours doing 2BSIQ! Not
good. The next 4 hours are 111, 102, 94 and 80 q's and without 80 I am dead.
By now 40 is almost gone and 20 is quiet. By 05z with only 519 q's I am already
300 qsos behind the top ops. My signal is not being heard. It is discouraging.
At 0521 KM7W already has an awesome 931 to my 545 - he and I are not operating
the same contest nor with similar stations or similar propagation, but still, I
ought to have at least 650 - 700 q's. Even with A=5 and K=1 I am listening to
lots of EU stations call other EU stations near me and ignore me. I just can't
to break through the EU wall Western CT is not a good place to be this weekend,
except to KL7RA, who calls in at 0536z on 40 with NO flutter! Not only is it
highly unusual to even hear KL7RA on 40 but to hear him LOUD and without flutter
is simply unimaginable. Strange weekend! Time to go to sleep after I make 4
qso's on 80 with my 40 meter wire beam. QRT at 0623z
Set my alarm for 0830z to make my food and get prepared for the day and I'm on
20 at 0915z after 1 1/2 hours of sleep. Some loud EU stations but not many of
them. As usual 20 is a tease and dies out. I do some 2BSIQ with the few brain
cells that are awake but soon it is just 40. Fooled again!
Why exactly am I killing myself just to operate and call some weak EU stations
when I REALLY need sleep? A good question to ponder when I am awake. By 10Z the
EU qso party is in full force - actually there are 2 contests running
simultaneously - the EU qso party and the WPX contest. The EU qso party sounds
like much more fun - great rates - loud callers - excellent short-skip - what's
not to like? The WPXCW? Not so much. A few EU weak callers, some stateside
callers and a lot of qrn.
FINALLY at 1015z, 20 opens and not long after the first JA's call in. As is the
custom, my antennas are at EU and then a loud JA calls in. Wanting to encourage
other JA callers, I turn the top antenna at JA; but as is also the custom,
turning the top antenna at JA ensures that no other JA or Asian stations will
call me. Realizing the error of my ways, I turn the antenna back to EU and
almost immediately another JA calls in. Now, one might think - well of course
the JA's call in with antennas on EU because they JA's are coming in over the
pole towards EU. Well they would be WRONG! The JA stations peak with the
antenna at JA not EU. But they only call when the antenna is pointed at EU. SO
THERE!
Determined to run JA, I keep my antennas pointed at EU and that seems to work.
As the K drops to 0, everything gets loud, especially the Asiatic Russians and
JA's. The rate climbs to 127 in the 10z hour but then started to drop off in
the 11z hour with only 110 as the band went long. A loud BY1CY called me many
times and I have him my number many times and then he just left the freq. after
confirming it. A frustrating not in log (NIL). The decline in rate continued
with a poor 12z hour - only 79 qsos and only 80 in the 13z hour. There were
loud Russian callers but almost nothing else. I assume that most of EU was on
10 and 15 working each other on sporadic E. The EU qso party was doing well!
Whether it was the sleep deprivation affecting my cognition or just desperation,
or both, I decided that at 1430z I would take offtime and instead of getting
sleep to augment the 1 1/2 hours that I had, I would go outside and fix my 80
meter 4-square and then put it back up. First I had to wash all the bird crap
off the antenna and then scrub it off. A pair of nesting Robbins liked using it
for recreational purposes - it was baked on - and not coming off. Putting on a
third pair of nitrile gloves, I got off what I could and then painstakingly
fixed the element and connection, reattached the ropes and guys and in the
process had to climb into and out of the woods 6 times before I had the heights
and angles correct. Three hours after I started I was done and 80 was back on
the air!
Can I sleep NOW? NO! said the taskmaster... It is 1830z, and way past time to
get back on the air! I dutifully try to run on 20 and was greeted by Vlad, 4K9W
at 1839. While signals were getting louder, so was the qrn as a nasty line of
Thunderstorms on the NY/PA border 90 miles away makes a beeline for my qth.
Between the increasing qrn, and worsening rapid qsb (signals dropping from S9 to
S0 between the beginning and end of the callsign!)it is getting very hard to
work anyone - at it appears to be reciprocal - everyone continues to ask me for
repeats as well. Even though signals are strong now I can not keep the rate
above 100 / hr with 107, 89, 100 and 83 qos in the 19 - 22 hours. 40 is awful
at 22z with only 57 q's although A61ZX called in at 2231z and brightened my
mood. Surprisingly 23z and 00z were no better with only 67 and 61 qsos. At 01z
I listen for the over the pole opening on 20 but only hear and work JT5DX. 40
is already fading out and the qrn is terrible. I split my time between 40 and
80 in the 01z hour with 74 q's and then decide to run on 80 since I had only 4
qso's the first night. Unfortunately 80 is not in good form and even with some
2BSIQ, I can only manage 80 and 71 qsos in the 02z and 03z hours. By 04z I am
back on a dying 40 because the Thunderstorm qrn is just too much. At 0513z I
qrt.
My 3 hours of mid-contest work on the 80 meter 4-square paid off with 187 q's on
saturday night but at the cost of sleep and vital concentration as I fought
microsleep for the entire day and evening. I would work someone and then wakeup
with a quiet freq. and no one in the log. Or I would type in the call and then
forget to type in the number. I had many, many qso's
that I had to take out of the log because I fell asleep and did not type the
information in. My sincere apologies to those stations who worked me and then I
fell asleep before I was able to type in your call into my log so I didn't know
who I worked!
I decided to sleep later and was on at 10z. 20 was almost dead. UGH! And it
did not want to open. Struggling mightily with very weak signals I could not
run, could not even walk, all I could do was crawl with 69, 66 and 62 qsos in
the 10z, 11z and 12z hours. The EU qso parts was still going strong and I was
still hearing so many EU stations call other EU stations on both sides of me and
not work me! This was made worse by the horrendous 3kc wide key clicks of IR4X
who was ignoring me every time I said KEY CLIX PLEASE FIX. He was 599+30 but
had no interest in copying what I was telling him or doing anything to fix it.
Thanks to the key clix which I could not filter out, he was claiming a 3 kc wide
swath of band - making it impossible for anyone else to use it. It was really a
shame too because JH4UYB was 599 + 10 on 20 but I could barely copy him. There
was no chance to work the other JA's that I knew must be calling because I had
pointed my antennas at Europe
;-)
Eventually I got tired of listening to IR4X in my passband and went to 15 just
as it was opening up. Even though I had not made any qsos on 15, because it was
Sunday and many people were taking offtime, there were few stations to work. At
first it was spotlight propagation - a few 9A, a few LZ a few YU then it slowly
expanded to Central EU and then the US got LOUD short-skip and with it came lots
of mults. The rate was not great 60 - 70 per hour even though I had only made
20 qsos the first day on 15. Most likely it was people having to take their
offtime on Sunday and others not on the air since there were ZERO sunspots. It
was a fun opening while it lasted and even 10 meters opened briefly to some of
South America in the 17z hour.
Back to 20 at 18z where I stayed making my 60 - 80 q's per hour with a steady
stream of callers from EU, US and Russia - but there was a highlight when 9L1YXJ
called in at 2135z followed by A71AE at 2214z and a few LP VK's
around 2250z after I made the qsy to 40. I stayed on 40 to the end - finishing
with 56 and 53 qsos in the 22 and 23z hours.
Final totals were 2,892 qsos x 1,017 mults = 8,925,192 in 35.3 hours
I was pleased to average 3.03 pts/qso but not happy about the poor rates this
year and the inability to run well on 15 and 20. With all the time that I spent
on 40 it was surprising not be able to make more qsos than I did.
Under the circumstances I though that I did well. No 80 meter antennas the
first time really hurt when I could not run on 40. And fixing the 80 meter
antenna in the hot sun and repeatedly climbing the ledge hill instead of getting
sleep was a killer. You cant operate effectively if you dont get sleep and are
falling asleep in between qsos. I have no doubt that it was possible to break
10 MEG from my station this weekend, even with the lousy start due to the poor
propagation that I experienced.
Hopefully this will be the last year this solar cycle of ZERO sunspots for this
contest. Once they turn up I will not be at such a disadvantage being this far
West from the Atlantic. 40 meters is a different matter. You need a good high
rotatable yagi to compete. I don't have one but I am working on it. There may
be a few meaningful antenna and station changes between this year and next,
health permitting.
I want to congratulate KM7W and NN5J for their great scores aided by excellent
2BSIQ operating. 32 years ago when I began operating a primitive form of SO2R,
people got all upset because I was using 2 radios to great advantage. It
routinely added 20% - 30% to my scores and forever changed the game. If you
wanted to compete at the top level you had to operate SO2R too - it was not long
before the arms race of station building began and contesting was never the
same. Eventually I got better at SO2R and so did my friends and competition as
the sport of contesting continued to evolve and grow.
Now we have 2BSIQ, and once again the level of skills and scores has been raised
- but this time even more so because NOW these ops are effectively running on
two bands at once - and with two OPEN bands, the score differential is magnified
even more - as can clearly be seen when compared to the simple SO2R or SO1R
stations. And I think that is great!
Contesting is all about having FUN and challenging yourself to become better,
faster, more efficient, more accurate and pushing yourself to the limit to see
what you are capable of doing.
Thanks for the qsos and the mults!
73
Bob KQ2M
kq2m@kq2m.com
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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