CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: K3EL
Operator(s): K3EL
Station: K3EL
Class: SOAB(TS) HP
QTH: Princeton, NJ
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 70
40: 554
20: 908
15: 150
10: 39
------------
Total: 1721 Prefixes = 737 Total Score = 3,275,965
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
It's been a while... took last year off from WPX and contesting in general, but
decided to get back in the chair for WPX CW 2017. Not having done much radio
recently, I had to spend a few evenings making sure that everything was working
in the station. The Acom amp was dusted off - it hasn't been plugged in for
quite a while - and it fired right up and happily poured forth gallons of watts
into the aether. I have a second K3S sat here waiting to be plumbed into the
station, but that wasn't going to happen in time for WPX, so this would be a
single radio operation. Based on the state of the solar cycle, the plan going
in was to spend most of my time on 20 and 40, with occasional forays to the
other bands. Conditions seemed ok leading in to the contest, but
spaceweather.com did mention a possible CME impacting the ionosphere on the
28th.
I decided to spend an hour on 20 m to begin with, then switch to 40. Although
propagation seemed fairly good, the rate in that first hour was disappointing
and so after that I felt I was playing catch-up all evening. Things were better
on 40 and so in retrospect I should probably have started there. I had a good
run until about 0330, went to 80 for a while, and then swapped banck and forth
between 20 and 40 until quitting for a few hours sleep at 0600. The visits to
20 were primarily to look for Pacific prefixes, and sure enough there were a
few good signals from VK/ZL and various islands.
Back in the chair at 1100, and it was straight to 20 m. Pointing the beam NW
pulled in several strong JA stations, but it was all S&P, I didn't make
many Q's CQing in that direction. So, for most of the morning I was beaming NE
and working EU. Checking on 15 for an hour or so pulled in a fair number of EU
contacts, but they were mostly with the big contest stations, conditions were
not good enough to contact many casual operators. Back to 20 for most of the
rest of the day, with the occasional foray onto 15 to sweep up some SA
prefixes. Saturday evening was pretty much a repeat of Friday, most of the time
being spent on 40 m. However, conditions were not great with a fair bit of noise
on the band. A large proportion of Qs were 1-pointers, I wasn't working so many
EU stations and so I quit at midnight to get some zzz.
Sunday morning brought "interesting" conditions. I started at 1000
with the intention to check 40 for OC stations to begin with. First Q was with
A31MM, and several other VK/ZL/Pac stations made it into the log over the next
hour. Some of these were strong signals, but a lot of NA stations were very
fluttery. Clearly the CME had arrived during the night, and messed up
propagation for Sunday. For the next several hours most of the Qs were
one-pointers. 10 m offered some entertainment later in the afternoon with good
openings to SA and the Caribbean. Propagation began to pick up again around
2000, so the last three hours were not quite so painful. Just after 2200 we
opened the wine, and at 2300 my 36 hours were done... just time to fire up the
BBQ before the rain started.
As usual, thanks to my XYL for providing refreshments at the radio! This year
it was easier to eat and CQ, given the slow rates!!
K3S/Acom 2000a
Steppir @ 42' - 3 ele 10-20 m, dipole 40 m; 80 m delta loop
N1MM logger+
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
______________________________________________
3830 mailing list
3830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/3830
|