CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: W6YX
Operator(s): W6LD N7MH
Station: W6YX
Class: M/S HP
QTH: Stanford
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 57 14 18
80: 314 23 32
40: 911 35 101
20: 969 36 109
15: 654 33 95
10: 94 20 33
------------------------------
Total: 2999 161 388 Total Score = 4,507,839
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
With John, W6LD/P40L, not going to Aruba this year I suggested that we do a
multi effort at W6YX. Our initial plans for a M/2 with a couple more operators
were scaled back due to the COVID surge in California, resulting in a 2 op M/S.
We arrived at the W6YX shack an hour before the contest start to find that the
club's EME contesters were busy making preparations for moonrise and the ARRL
EME contest. Their 2-meter array is mounted on a rotatable steel pole that also
holds a C31XR and inverted vees for 80 and 40. The inverted vees have to be
dropped during moonbounce operations so we lost our primary 80 meter CW antenna
for the night-time hours when we'd most need it. The C31XR could still be used
but at night it was beaming in unexpected or useless directions (due south when
we checked it once). The 40m inverted vee is handy for making quick calls
without having to rotate the 40m Yagi.
John and Pete, K6TJ, had moved our 80m SSB inverted vee to a different tower
after the SSB SS and John attached extensions that can be quickly connected to
make it resonant in the CW band. With a downslope and lower horizon toward Asia
we hoped this antenna would improve our signal in that direction. This contest
was a trial by fire for the antenna since it was the only 80m transmit antenna
we could use.
Our setup for the contest was two operating positions: my normal SO2R station
with two K3s, Alpha 86 and Alpha 9500; and John's station with a single K3 and
Alpha 87A. On bands where I could do same-band SO2R, which ended up just being
20 and 10, due to the unavailable inverted vees for 40 and 80, I could CQ on one
radio and click on packet spots with the other as the M/S run station. When John
was gone for a sleep break I could use one of the SO2R radios as a run radio and
the other as the mult radio.
At the contest start I began as the run station on 15 and John first checked 10,
nothing heard, and then went mult-hunting on 20. After 13 minutes I'd made 44 Qs
on 15 when my computer froze and the monitor had a periodic pattern overlaying
the display which was not updating as John made mult Qs. After unseating and
reseating USB connectors and the display connector with no change I finally
turned off the computer and rebooted. The monitor was blank and I couldn't get
it to display anything. After two more reboot cycles it finally showed the
normal boot screen and after several minutes and a couple of things started in
the wrong order, I was back on the air.
I lost 11 minutes in that first hour due to the computer issue which seems
almost insignificant for the overall contest but that first hour is often the
highest rate hour and I was disappointed to only have 49 minutes of it. I ended
up with 127 Qs on 15 in those 49 minutes which is a good hour for working mostly
JAs with 2x3 callsigns.
We moved down the bands, the mult station going down first followed by the run
station. John took over as run station once we got to 40. I moved to 80 to work
mults and discovered that there were two major noise sources on the band. There
was a background noise that was S7 to S9 on our Beverages and then a much louder
noise that would cycle on and off, sometimes as frequently as every 10 seconds,
that showed up on the panadapter as S9+20 spikes every 10 KHz or so with troughs
between at S9.
These noises were much louder on our Beverages, and particularly on the Beverage
favoring Asia. We speculate that the background noise was from a light dimmer in
the EME shack and we recognized the intermittent noise from previous experiences
with the EME array positioning motors. The noises disappeared after the moon had
gone down and the EME guys left for the night. We ended up listening on the
transmit antennas on 80 and 160 for much of the night because the Beverages were
not usable with the noise.
Our low band numbers on 80 and 160 would have been better if not for the EME
contest noise. We heard several Europeans on 80, mostly CT and EA, but the noise
would kick in at inopportune times to prevent hearing enough to make a QSO.
Both John and I operated for close to 36 hours each so there were around 24
hours of the contest when we only had one active station. We made one tactical
mistake that cost us some Qs. John's first break extended into the first
morning's openings on 20 and 15 into Europe. I tried to run Europeans on one
radio while working mults on the other but dealing with a small pileup of
fluttery signals while also trying to sync up a call on the other radio was
compromising both efforts so I resorted to a single radio, working mults on 20
then moving to 15 and 10 to work mults. Eventually, with most of the spotted
mults worked, I settled back to run on 20 and work mults with my second radio
but it was late in the EU opening, signals were down as was the rate.
I had one additional computer incident, with it abruptly turning off, but we had
enough experience at that point that John simply took over running on the band I
had been on in under a minute.
On the second night the EME crew said they would be shutting down at midnight so
we'd be able to hear on 80 and 160. When it was 12:30 AM and we still heard the
noise one of them dropped by to say that they had tied their previous record of
113 Qs on 2m EME and were continuing to operate until they broke their record.
Unfortunately for us this meant waiting for moonrise to travel across the
Pacific and illuminate some new area populated by EME contesters that hadn't
been worked the previous night. Finally at 3:30 AM the noise stopped. As they
departed they said they had broken their record by 3 QSOs.
With the noise gone I tried running on 160 but the rate was too low to justify
staying there very long. Running on 80 was more productive for short periods,
alternating with 40. I missed being able to do 2BSIQ where you don't have to
choose which band on which to CQ, but can do both at once.
We worked all zones except 34, 36 and 39. We heard and called ZD7 for zone 36
unsuccessfully. I don't recall hearing anyone in zones 34 or 39 or seeing a
packet spot for either.
We missed the opening to JA on 10 that others in zone 3 experienced but had KH2
call us while hoping to attract JA callers. We hadn't worked any Europeans on 10
by Sunday morning and clicking on spots I wasn't hearing anything. I tuned the
band while beaming Caribbean and heard and worked CR6K. A short time later I
heard several EA stations while beaming this skew path and worked one for the
mult. I didn't hear any other European countries but hadn't considered listening
on skew path until very late in the morning.
As the end of the contest approached John and I assumed that 3000 Qs was out of
reach. Our rate was low and we were at 2857 with 2 hours left. Then both 15 and
20 opened to JA and there were still enough unworked stations to make 61 Qs in
the 2200 hour and 81 in the 2300 hour, finishing with 2999, one shy of the 3000
mark. 132 of the total are 0-pointers. We worked all 0-pointers that called
unless there was a DX station calling at the same time.
Thanks to all for the Qs.
73,
-Mike, N7MH
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