CQ WPX RTTY Contest - 2019
Call: P49X
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: P40L/P49Y
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: FLal52
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 578
40: 1087
20: 881
15: 660
10: 1
------------
Total: 3207 Prefixes = 805 Total Score = 11,707,920
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
The 25th CQ QPX RTTY Contest was a blast and I hope it was the same for
everyone. Conditions and activity exceeded my expectations for the solar
minimum. Still, the 30-hour scoring limit for single ops is too long for
maintaining maximum SO2R QSO rate. In fact, there weren’t 30 hours when even
one band wasn’t open enough to run “rate”. I ended up spreading my
operating over the entire 48 hours in an attempt to capture the highest rate
times. On the plus side, the 4-5 hours sleep each morning was luxury! In years
like this I’m glad for the 30-hour scoring time for SO compared to 36 hours in
CW/SSB WPX.
This result is slightly lower than last year’s effort. Total QSO points are
higher but prefix mults are 10% lower. It will be interesting to see if the
lower mults is unique or similar to other logs. The best 60-minute rate was
only 3 QSOs short of my all-time high back in 2013, but as noted above, the
average rate over 30 hours is way down in these solar minimum years.
Interestingly, this peak rate occurred on Sunday morning rather than in the
first couple hours of the contest as it always has previously.
WPX rules nicely compensate for lower total contacts, however, with double QSO
points on 40 and 80 meters. For this reason, I tend to think of WPX as a
“low-band contest” with 10-20 meters to keep us active in daylight hours.
Modest QSO rates on the low bands can generate points faster than seemingly high
rates on the high bands … a factor of 2x is huge.
The towers/antennas here have deteriorated, as expected in this environment,
since the last re-build in 2008. During my stay here in January, the 20-meter
reflector fell off and one of the loading T-bars also fell off the 80-meter
dipole. I fixed the dipole loading by adding a coil at the feed point to
compensate for the missing T-bar. Apparently, that increased the RF voltage at
the center such that a hole was blown through the PVC element insulator,
shorting out one half of the dipole. This week I fixed that with a patch of
Teflon sheeting and the antenna played solidly all week and through the contest
at 1500 watts. I “fixed” the 20-meter reflector by imagining that the
signal strength was tremendous even without that element. (This is a trick,
i.e., “think” you are loud, stolen from Dean N6BV.)
In the station, I discovered one on my K3’s sub-receivers had no signals or
band noise but otherwise seemed to operate correctly. After trying everything I
could think of, I peered inside and fortunately noticed that the sub-receiver
input was not plugged into the motherboard, although it appeared to be.
So, entering the contest weekend, I was pretty bullish about station hardware.
Until about 4 and al half hours in, when the 91B amplifier shut off. I
soldiered on for a while at low power (on 80 m) but eventually caved in and took
a one-hour break to swap in a spare 86A amp. The 91B is blowing Step-Start
fuses like it did in 2015 when we eventually discovered a shorted 24-volt
winding on the power transformer. Sure hope that’s not the case again and
that the fix will be easier and less hassle and cost.
There is an interesting and recent trend in QSO phases deployed by an
ever-increasing number of operators. This is where the S&P caller sends
their exchange in answer to a CQ, rather than just their call sign. Almost all
of them then send a QSL/TU message after I send their report, so no time is
saved overall. I’ve decided to pretend they are doing this to save time and
so I send my exchange AND my TU/CQ messages as one transmission. If that
confuses them, then I consider us “even”! Seriously, I’m not sure where
this “technique” comes from, unless it is plagiarized from FT8 contest
messaging where it DOES make sense for the S&P station to send their
exchange on the first call. (The logic for this is sound in FT8 contesting,
which can be explained outside of this soapbox.) I really don’t have a beef
about this and I assume the practitioners don’t mind the way I handle it.
;>)
An hour after the contest period ended, there were 1000 logs received.
Apparently, the uproar several years ago about shortened deadline for log
submittal hasn’t turned out to be such a overwhelming burden it was imagined
to be. It also shows RTTY contesting is alive a well, despite the instant
popularity of FT8 this past year.
Thanks to everyone who participated, at whatever intensity, because contesting
is a team activity. It’s not possible without a large number of us and the
fun increases with the more active stations. I personally appreciate each and
every QSO partner. And, it’s a thrill when I get the 4th band with a given
station--118 of you this weekend. (Yeah, sorry about 10 meters. I CQ’d there
for an hour at prime time on Sunday and worked exactly one station, a CX.
Checking later, I found zero hits on the RBN for that one-hour excursion.)
Up next is ARRL DX CW in a week, with the P40L team.
Ed W0YK
*******************************************************************
Rigs (2): Elecraft K3S (2), with P3 (2) and K-pod (2)
Amps: Alpha 86 (2)
Logging software: WriteLog 11.37b on three networked PCs, one for each SO2R
radio and one master as backup and CC-User server.
Tower 1: 3 elements 20 meter (no reflector) at 68 feet
2 elements 40 meter at 76 feet
1 element 80 meter Sigma 80 at 64 feet
160 meter "Double L" vertical at 67 feet
Tower 2: 2 (yes, two!) elements on 10 meters interlaced with 5 elements on 15
meters at 55 feet
Tower 3: C31XR at 43 feet
RX antennas: four 500-foot beverages using K9AY switching box/preamp
*******************************************************************
Cabrillo Statistics (Version 10g) by K5KA & N6TV
http://bit.ly/cabstat
CALLSIGN: P49X
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
CONTEST: CQ-WPX-RTTY
OPERATORS: P49X
-------------- Q S O R a t e S u m m a r y ---------------------
Hour 160 80 40 20 15 10 Rate Total Pct
--------------------------------------------------------------------
0000 0 43 100 0 0 0 143 143 4.4
0100 0 57 98 0 0 0 155 298 9.2
0200 0 55 98 0 0 0 153 451 14.0
0300 0 49 91 0 0 0 140 591 18.3
0400 0 54 91 0 0 0 145 736 22.8
0500 0 11 30 0 0 0 41 777 24.1
0600 0 26 27 0 0 0 53 830 25.7
0700 0 33 48 0 0 0 81 911 28.2
0800 0 13 35 0 0 0 48 959 29.7
0900 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 961 29.8
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 961 29.8
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 961 29.8
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 961 29.8
1300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 961 29.8
1400 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 961 29.8
1500 0 0 0 44 43 0 87 1048 32.5
1600 0 0 0 109 82 0 191 1239 38.4
1700 0 0 0 117 81 0 198 1437 44.5
1800 0 0 0 103 92 0 195 1632 50.6
1900 0 0 0 76 89 0 165 1797 55.7
2000 0 0 0 66 46 0 112 1909 59.2
2100 0 0 52 66 0 0 118 2027 62.8
2200 0 0 61 63 0 0 124 2151 66.7
2300 0 12 50 13 0 0 75 2226 69.0
0000 0 20 54 0 0 0 74 2300 71.3
0100 0 46 44 0 0 0 90 2390 74.1
0200 0 30 40 0 0 0 70 2460 76.3
0300 0 30 33 0 0 0 63 2523 78.2
0400 0 45 44 0 0 0 89 2612 81.0
0500 0 35 21 0 0 0 56 2668 82.7
0600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
0700 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
1300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2668 82.7
1400 0 0 0 20 11 0 31 2699 83.7
1500 0 0 0 43 17 0 60 2759 85.5
1600 0 0 0 8 14 0 22 2781 86.2
1700 0 0 0 31 37 0 68 2849 88.3
1800 0 0 0 43 33 1 77 2926 90.7
1900 0 0 0 23 65 0 88 3014 93.4
2000 0 0 0 35 48 0 83 3097 96.0
2100 0 0 0 6 2 0 8 3105 96.2
2200 0 0 45 14 0 0 59 3164 98.1
2300 0 24 38 0 0 0 62 3226 100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 584 1101 880 660 1 3226
Gross QSOs=3270 Dupes=44 Net QSOs=3226
Unique callsigns worked = 1920
The best 60 minute rate was 205/hour from 1723 to 1822
The best 30 minute rate was 214/hour from 1725 to 1754
The best 10 minute rate was 246/hour from 1727 to 1736
The best 1 minute rates were:
6 QSOs/minute 3 times.
5 QSOs/minute 42 times.
4 QSOs/minute 136 times.
3 QSOs/minute 318 times.
2 QSOs/minute 498 times.
1 QSOs/minute 504 times.
There were 1810 bandchanges and 1142 (35.4%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.
Number of letters in callsigns
Letters # worked
-----------------
3 8
4 1296
5 1234
6 664
7 18
8 4
9 2
Multi-band QSOs
---------------
1 bands 1101
2 bands 450
3 bands 251
4 bands 118
5 bands 0
6 bands 0
------- S i n g l e B a n d Q S O s ------
Band 160 80 40 20 15 10
----------------------------------------------
QSOs 0 160 461 323 157 0
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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