CQWW WPX Contest, SSB
Call: TI7W
Operator(s): N3KS
Station: TI7W
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Costa Rica
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 118
40: 1152
20: 2306
15: 906
10: 382
------------
Total: 4864 Prefixes = 1031 Total Score = 14,076,243
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
First, thanks to everyone who participated and the sponsors of WPX who make this
one of the most fun contests ever. It seems to me that this contest has more
participation by non participants than most contests :)
I thought I would start on 40m and see if I could get a good EU run going early,
and for the first 45 minutes it seemed like that was a good idea. However, it
seemed to dry up pretty suddenly after that, so I went to 20m and had good
results for a while although it was almost all stateside. 20m lasted until
about 0200Z at which point it was going to have to be 40m and hopefully 80m for
the rest of the night. 40m held steady, but not spectacularly so, but 80m was a
big disappointment Friday night. Try as I might, I could get nothing meaningful
going on that band and many stations I called in EU did not seem to hear me. By
the end of Friday night a whopping 22 stations made it into the log on 80m.
The radios start to come alive on 20m around 1200Z here in the morning at this
time of the susnpot cycle. Hopefully lots of EU can be worked on 20m and then
15m, but that was not to be this time around. 15m only had a brief and late
opening to EU. I was counting on good EU propagation on both 20m and 15m
because there is a noise source that obliterates 15m in the direction of the USA
and is also about s7 on 20m, but it can be nulled effectively with the antennas
pointed at EU. However this assumes that there are stations to work in that
direction and unfortunately that was a bad assumption for most of the weekend on
15m and to a lesser extent on 20m from here.
Saturday was a slog, but startegic mistakes on my part probably contributed to
it. 10m opened nicely in the afternoon and stayed open a long time. In most
contests that would be something to take great advantage of from here, but in
this one not so much. However I think the novelty of it got me and I spent more
time on that band than I should have Saturday afternoon. In retrospect I
probably missed the best time for EU on 20m Saturday. Saturday night was better
on 80m, while 40m seemed to have propagation but not much depth to it.
On Sunday, even though 10m was open again in the afternoon, I did not go there
at all and used the time to max out on 20m, which ended up being quite
productive. 15m was open again but with the RFI noise I could not hear but the
loudest stations. I even had on two occasions ops from other stations tell me
on the air that I was an alligator on 15m. Harsh words for a station that
prides itself on hearing better than most ... :) My apologies to the many
callers on 15m that I am sure were in there wondering why I did not pick them
up, and also to the many 15m Q's where I asked for repeats.
As always, it was a super enjoyable contest and congrats in advance for the big
scores I know will come from 8P5A and P49Y among others.
73
Kam
TI7W
N3KS
ex TI5W
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