CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW
Call: W2GD
Operator(s): W1KM K2TW N2HM KU2C W2CG W2GD W2OB W2NO W2RQ
Station: W2GD
Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: NJ
Operating Time (hrs): 38
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 1509 State/Prov = 59 Countries = 74 Total Score = 864,899
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
LOCATION: West Creek, NJ, on Barnaget Bay, 90 miles south of NYC, 20 miles north
of Atlantic City, the site of WYRS-FM
STATION: K3 x 3, Acom 2000A, 1.5 Kw, Win-Test Software
TX ANTENNAS: Two element vertical wire beams, NE and WSW @ 240 feet over a salt
marsh
RX ANTENNAS (Beverages):
4 ele x 900 foot phased beverage array NE (covers ~19 acres)
450' South/North unterm.
560' Southwest
800' West
900' Northwest
560' East/West unterm.
CONTEST OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS
Preparation
Hope everyone have fun last weekend. The CQ160 CW is my second most favorite
contest, just behind CQWW CW @ P40W, and just ahead of ARRL FD from
anywhere....I look forward to the CQ160 CW all year as I'm sure many of you do
too. This was the 26th year our original 160 Team gathered together to do
battle....and after all this time remain an enthusiastic team....still drawn in
by the technical challenges attached to making big antennas work...and never
knowing what the propagation gods will deliver. The element of surprise is
addictive.
We managed a fairly good showing last month in the Stew Perry TBDC - we even
achieved the longest distance QSO of the entire contest (with VK6DXI) - but
there were still several loose ends to resolve before 'the BIG ONE'. The most
pressing issue was operator staffing - several of the regular operators would
be unavailable on the contest weekend.
But things came together over the ten days before the contest. Greg, W1KM
accepted our invitation to come down and join the team for what we promised
would be an eventful "Winter Vacation" weekend at the Jersey Shore
(TNX AGAIN Greg!) The second was a half-day work party just before return of
another 'Polar Vortex' cold front - to extend the West beverage several hundred
feet, begin extension of the Northwest beverage another 350 feet, and to do some
noise sleuthing at the site. I enjoyed several days of talking up the contest
on social media (Facebook)...great fun and an amazing response from 160
operators around the world.
The morning of the contest several team members met at the site bright and
early to do what is now considered routine prep work.....test and re-tune the
TX antennas (the salt marsh was frozen solid which expedited things), relearn
how to setup/configure/cable the radios, switching systems, and computers so
everything 'talks' (we took the time to do some documentation), and then we
walked all of the beverages (2 miles of slogging about in the woods on a very
cold day in snow and ice). All the preplanning worked, we were ready for
battle a whopping 15 minutes before the bell!
The Contest
A few things stick out in my memory from the weekend. Conditions were never
outstanding to anywhere...even those close-in stations who are normally
'booming' sounded subdued. Unlike most other years, frequency fights were
non-existent...finding a place to call CQ wasn't a problem....supporting the
feeling participation was down significantly this time. Based upon the
observations reported by many other stations in the USA on 3830, this year
signals out of EU were much less plentiful in most parts of the USA with the
exception of possibly New England. Distance from target clearly mattered (look
at VY2ZM's huge score). We concur with many who felt conditions were somewhat
better the first night than the second. We didn't observe any propagation
enhancement at EU sunrise on either night. From NJ conditions to the Pacific
were very poor, even VE7 contacts were a struggle, and JA and KL7 were nothing
but a nanosecond whisper.
We knew from the start this would be a tough uphill battle. During the first
hour we made NO ten point contacts, all the while listening to K1LZ 'running'
EU on 1813. RBN data confirmed that stations south of New England (AA1K, K3ZM,
NR4M, N4PN@W8JI, etc.) were not being heard as consistently by skimmers in EU.
Unfortunately this would remain the prevailing pattern the entire weekend.
Geography and propagation are always the big 'wildcards' in this event. We
managed to work 225 EU stations the first evening, most of them near or at the
noise level.
A highlight of the weekend was testing our new four element EU beverage array
(a pair of two phased 900 footers) erected just before ARRL160. For several
years we suspected performance of the original two element phased EU beverage
suffered from being too close to the salt marsh and this weekend proved the
point. Going forward we'll only use the new phased pair that are 200 meters
from the marsh.....the antenna is dead quiet and has a wonderful 'cone of
silence' toward the USA.
Saturday afternoon, awaiting darkness, we took the opportunity to do some other
beverage enhancement work, extending and terminating the SW beverage, and then
extending the NW beverage 120 meters through some very difficult undergrowth.
While out in the woods, heavy snow began to fall so W1KM got the full
'experience' of a typical CQ160 operation from the Jersey shore.
As darkness approached Saturday evening, again we listened to the K1LZ team
running EU while we struggled to hear any DX signals at all....sigh. Only with
great effort over the next 8 hours we struggled to put another 170 EU calls in
the log, riding the waves of QSB, often only when three operators collaborated
to pull out the call ....a great team effort!
Here is our continental breakdown (incl. dupes):
NA - 1147 73%
EU - 395 25%
SA - 13
AF - 3
AS - 6
OC - 5
It was not unusual to encounter unsuspecting 'W' stations frequency sharing
with many of the multipliers we would try to work. I specifically recall
calling and working 3V8BB through a fairly loud W7 who was on or near the
frequency at the time. This was pretty much standard operating procedure....we
tried our best to limit the period of 'disruption' but sometimes it's
unavoidable - so we apologize for any inconvenience. Fortunately there was
plenty of interesting DX to work...particularly goodies like 4J, 4L, 40, HZ,
5B4, CE and others...but breaking through the EU station wall was a huge
challenge much of the time. Thanks again to all of the operators on the other
end who worked very hard to get our call correct.
The final thrill of the weekend was having VE5ZX and N0UD answer CQs just
before local sunrise Sunday morning to give us the needed SK and ND
multipliers. This somewhat made up for not being able to work the abundant
number of JA stations and KL7KY who we couldn't quite copy.
We sincerely congratulate the K1LZ Team for their great score, and thank all
operators world-wide who made the time to participate. And as always we
sincerely thank WYRS-FM for continuing to host our 160 meter contest madness
all these years.
So...whats next? In the near-term, members of the SJDXA will operate the CQ160
PHONE contest under the call N2CW from the site. The CW team is kicking around
several TX and RX antenna improvement projects for next season.....stay tuned.
73,
John, W2GD for the 160 TEAM
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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