CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: AB1J
Operator(s): AB1J
Station: AB1J
Class: SO(A)SB20 LP
Class Overlay: TB-Wires
QTH: Waltham EMA
Operating Time (hrs): 22:12
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80:
40:
20: 560
15:
10:
------------
Total: 560 Prefixes = 382 Total Score = 378,944
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
This is one of the infrequent years the WPX-CW didn't fall on the USA Memorial
Day weekend. That plus stay-at-home made for a good contest. Conditions were
good depending on your entry category. For me conditions started out good but
declined over the weekend, although 20m perked up the last few hours. There
were good 15m and 10m openings.
This has been my favorite international QSO party for a long time. I'm not good
on a keyboard so serial numbers are a challenge for me. It gets worse with QSB,
cut numbers and with high speed 4-digit numbers toward the end. When the
numbers got high and fast I took to copying them on paper before transferring
them to the logger. I was doing all S&P at this point so that worked well,
but I wish I personally was 100% computerized.
I spent the preceding week testing my outside stealth wire on 20m FT8 (that's
where the action is). It's a 20m full wave sloper out my shack window, fed at
the near end. It's very low; its high end is at the same height as the computer
monitor I'm viewing now. From there on it's down all the way, just like the
turtles. Some tests on the RBN vs. my attic dipole showed it to be marginally
better even through the dipole is higher.
I've had good luck with full wave wires. At one city QTH I put up a dipole which
was too low (10 ft), so I hooked another half wave wire to it and got it up into
a crab apple tree (like 15 ft). In a sense I was using the first dipole as a
feedline to the second dipole. It worked well, considering. Got DXCC on it
with 60w.
Anyway, my tests went well and I decided to do 20m Assisted. 20m is a tough band
for me as I go up against lots of guys with beams, from lowly tribanders to
monobanders stacked up into the stratosphere. It's a struggle to compete.
This is the 3rd time I've done this contest on 20m:
2014 SA LP 20m 487,625 526 Qs 415 Px 26.3 hours attic dipole
2018 SO LP 20m 300,900 471 Qs 346 Px 24.8 hours attic dipole
2020 SA LP 20m 378,944 560 Qs 382 Px 22.2 Hours outdoor full wave
(claimed score)
It looks as if I'm getting better rate but not doing so well with points and
prefixes. For little stations like mine, Assisted is always better than
Non-Assisted.
Some random things, funny, interesting or sad:
YT3X often gets skimmed as TJ3X (figure it out). I've seen this in other
contests, too, so there must be something slightly off in his keying.
WP4X was certainly an appropriate call.
My friend Dave, WN4AFP, gave me serial number 666. I thought maybe folks
skipped that one, like some buildings that don't have a 13th floor.
The noon-day demon took away the DX propagation for me until mid-afternoon,
although my selected spotters were still sending me many DX spots I couldn't
hear, so I set my filter for NA to get only spots I could work. I use ViewProp
which is a slick program. Flow is from RBN via VE7CC (limited to New England
spotters) to VP to N1MM+.
At one point I adjusted my AGT threshold for less noise but a few minutes later
found myself jacking up my AF gain because it seemed too quiet. Oops.
Friday evening someone was DQRMing running stations. Just as I called AK1W
(K5ZD), the jammer hit us and completely covered him. I didn't know what to do,
so I just waited. After what seemed a long time, the jammer let up and Randy
blasted his exchange to me and I fired back and split. I thought it was cool
that we both waited it out. Thanks, Randy.
I generally was less happy waiting for the SO2R guys, but that's how we do it
now. Stall and crawl. Maybe I'm just envious of their skills.
I was Assisted but during most of the contest I tuned between spots and found
lots of stations not spotted, or not yet spotted. The 6500's bandscope made it
easy. During the final few hours, though, I just skippity-hopped up and down
the band through the available spots, trying to wipe them out. Like Space
Invaders.
I couldn't get runs going. This is SOP for me. Only 5.3% QSOs running. I'm
following the "Test at End of CQ" discussion on CQ-Contest, so maybe
I'll learn how to be more efficient. But I really need a signal enhancer.
Thanks for the QSOs.
73,
Ken, AB1J
Flex 6500
N1MM Logger+
Outdoor 66' end-fed stealth wire. A 20m full wave with a nice cloverleaf
pattern.
LoTW eQSL ClubLog
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