CQWW WPX Contest, SSB
Call: OT6M
Operator(s): ON9CC PA3FGA PD5AX PC5A
Station: OT6M
Class: M/S HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 90
80: 553
40: 816
20: 734
15: 88
10:
------------
Total: 2281 Prefixes = 975 Total Score = 5,409,300
Club: Bavarian Contest Club
Comments:
This edition of the WPX SSB was the first M/S entry from OT6M. That means we
didn't have a real goal what to aim for or what would be possible.
With 4 operators (Frank-ON9CC, Rens-PA3FGA, Claudia-PD5AX and Aurelio-PC5A) we
started and also ended the contest and were able to man the dual transceiver
setup (inband) always with two op's. The setup changed compared to the RDXC by
swapping the good old ORION (565) with the ORION II (566), thanks to a very
generous offer of the 5th core team member Mark-PA5MW, who had other
commitments for this contest.
Station:
TRX: IC7800 and Orion II (interlocked)
PA: ACOM2000
Antennas:
TRX: dipoles for 160m and 80m, OB2-40, OB11-3, 3 el.SteppIR
RX: K9AY + NVIS
Frank and Aurelio started the contest on 40M, after having drunk a nice cup of
Dolce Gusto coffee and eaten a piece of a home made pie (something with
chocolate, cherries and whip cream). The band sounded kind of weird, the
loudest signals from the US were just making the S-meter move a bit... When we
QSY'ed to 80M things were much better with some nice EU runs. 40M remained poor
for cross continental QSO's. After the first 6 night time hours only 340 QSO's
were made. Even without any reference score we felt this was kind of poor... We
hoped daytime propagation would compensate that.
Well, it didn't.. 15M was really bad... and we couldn't get anything going on
20M either. This all changed when around 17Z (still daytime) we moved to 40M
where we had the 3 best hours of the contest with 136, 147 and 96 Q's per hour.
It helped bring the total at half-time to 1400Q's. usually you can multiply this
QSO number by 1.5 to arrive at the final QSO count, which would mean around 2100
Q's. But then the bands would have to remain in the same shape.
Day two was comparable with day one except that 15M brought in some needed
multipliers. That band never opened to North America. In fact only 5 stations
from NA were worked... Are we in the solar minimum already?
So we set a benchmark for next years, had a wonderful weekend and just enjoyed
the great radio-sport.
Some things we noticed
- the ORION II did not produce a spike on the ICOM when the ORION II stopped
transmitting -> one problem solved!
- every time we tuned above 7.200 MHz we heard a lot of stations calling CQ but
none of them had to the idea to listen SPLIT, between 7.060 and 7.200 MHz... a
pity!
- the K9AY we used on 160, 80 and even 40M proved very effective.
- 40M proved to be the bread-and-butter band, thanks to the new 2 EL 40M yagi.
- far less stations tuned across the band compared to RDXC. If you were not
spotted it was very difficult to get any runs. At least we tried to help the
others though... and placed about 380 spots our selves (eh.. it helps to have a
2nd station that can actually tune across the band, while the other tries to get
a run going, hihi).
- a tip for N1MM users: you can switch on the option "SPOT ALL S&P
QSOs"
On behalf of the team at OT6M
73
-- Aurelio, PC5A
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