CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2021
Call: NN7CW
Operator(s): NN7CW
Station: NN7CW
Class: SOAB HP
Class Overlay: Unassisted
QTH: NFL
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 10
80: 116
40: 879
20: 1281
15: 433
10: 31
------------
Total: 2750 Prefixes = 964 Total Score = 6,906,096
Club:
Comments:
First of all, I want to thank the organizers of the Unassisted Challenge to save
the WPX contest for me and so many others. I had been grappling with the
situation ever since it was announced that my favorite contest of the year would
no longer feature my favorite category and I was vacillating between 24h
Classic, or entering a completely unrelated category, something like
multi-multi, just for shits and giggles. Luckily, the competition with
(hopefully) true Unassisted entrants was saved by KI6RRN, N6MJ and others and
that motivated me to go for another serious full-time effort. Once again, thank
you guys!
Since last time, my station configuration hadn't changed much, so for the first
time I took a closer look at previous results and built a strategy around it.
Last year's effort was hampered by a series of thunder storms, so there were
some gaps at times I would have preferred to operate. Luckily, there was only
one thunder storm Saturday afternoon, so I was mostly able to stick with my
plan. While the QSO count was down by exactly 200, I happened to work 7% more
multipliers, partially by spending less time on 10m and 80m and probably
partially because people could travel and operate more freely again.
I like playing on the high bands to catch potential openings, but the goal was
to beat last year's result, so wasting time on 10 was not an option. However, I
was surprised that 80m yielded only half the QSO count. The band was somehow
noisy and less busy, so that was a little bit of a disappointment. At the same
time, I only got 88% of the 40m QSO count, despite spending an equal amount of
energy on that band. Somehow, the low bands were down a little while the high
bands appeared to be somewhat equal.
Due to the strategy adjustment, I increased my 20m QSO count by 25% and here is
where I also increased the multiplier count the most. The final (raw) score is
up by 21%, so I am happy with my result. The only problems I encountered were
one thunderstorm and an intermittent noise source mostly felt on the high bands.
Especially Sunday afternoon I was struggling to copy stations through the
buzzing hum, so I apologize for the repeats I needed around that time.
Lastly, I want to call on any contest organizer to consider penalties for the
two following items:
1. Excessively wide signals that clearly have the potential to interfere with
others. It is unfair that someone impedes another station's QSOs while not
hearing anything from the guy he is interfering with and there are stations out
there that clearly utilize their dirty signal to wrestle their way in. Rob
Sherwood and others have repeatedly discussed excessively wide signals and
nowadays, more and more stations are equipped with spectrum displays in their
transceivers, so they can visually quantify the extent of the problem and make
recordings. I hope the WPX rule XIII.A.5 will be applied properly and I would
like to see that other contests follow suit. If a licensed Amateur Radio
operator is not at all capable of making sure his signal is acceptable, he might
want to look into CB radio instead.
2. Inappropriate behavior: As an Unassisted guy, I mostly run and once I have a
frequency, I’m not moving quickly. During this contest, I noticed that at
least an anonymous "QRL?", followed by a sufficient pause, is
something you hardly hear anymore. The new norm seems to be a question mark,
followed by about a second of silence before someone starts calling CQ and
irrevocably claims the frequency. Or the CQ is started immediately, without any
hesitation. Often times, one is listening to an exchange in that moment and then
you can either screw up your QSO by immediately CQing yourself, or you risk a
feud with the impatient, anonymous question mark guy when he starts CQing,
because he won't admit that he wasn't really checking the status of the
frequency and leave. I’ve encountered some bold claims about the frequency
being in use I can easily disprove (log + audio recording). Interestingly, it's
the ambitious participants and not the newcomers, so they all know what they are
doing. I too am ambitious and occasionally miss that someone is already on a
QRG, but once it becomes clear to me that the guy is already working others, I
surrender and bugger off, because that's what one should do. I call for an
amendment to the Unsportsmanlike Conduct rules to disqualify anyone who
repeatedly behaves like that, if clear evidence is provided, especially when
accompanied by rudeness and insults.
Thanks and 73,
Wolf, NN7CW
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