CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: NE0F
Operator(s): K0EU
Station: NE0F
Class: SO(A)AB HP
QTH: CO
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 3
80: 241
40: 853
20: 1154
15: 291
10: 22
------------
Total: 2564 Prefixes = 914 Total Score = 5,040,710
Club: Grand Mesa Contesters of Colorado
Comments:
This was my first ever "serious" entry in a WPX contest from my own
station. Earlier this year, I had some fun at W0LSD's place in the RTTY WPX in a
multi-op. So, with not much to do over the weekend, I talked myself into a full
bore entry in the CW weekend. Andy, DL3YM, had done a nice job setting the
0-land SO(A)AB HP record from my station in 2016. I decided to enter that same
category and see what I could do. I used the Contester's Unlimited callsign
NE0F. This was a mixed blessing. I'm sure more people went after me when I was
spotted because I think I was the only "NE0" in the contest, but it is
apparently a very difficult call to understand on CW. I placed extra half-spaces
of time between all the letters. Still seemed like the "E" was getting
lost. Maybe someone can tell me what else might help (other than change to
another call sign).
Things didn't start as planned. I had to wait out the first 30 minutes while a
thunderstorm moved through. But, then I got into it and found conditions were
generally good although it became obvious that some kind of disturbance was
happening as I started working Europe. Was cruising along on Saturday morning
running 15 and 20 simultaneously, when somebody told me my signal was
"buzzing". I listened on a second RX and confirmed the bad news.
Not thinking straight, I assumed it was the K-3 and swapped it for my spare.
This was not an easy task, due to a rats nest of cables plus I was already
feeling the effects of sleep deprivation. Well, of course it wasn't the K-3, it
was the amp. Moved my spare amp over on top of the malfunctioning amp. It is an
alpha 76, and I forgot how heavy it was. I kind of lost control of it as I was
moving it, and managed to let it hit the "Z" button on one of my
keyboards. At least I didn't hit something more valuable. The button still kind
of worked. I could only run barefoot on one of the radios, so I swapped
keyboards so the "good" keyboard was on the QRO radio. I went ahead
and took a full hour off, then got back to 15/20. 2BISQ didn't work nearly as
well as it had been. I more or less gave up on that and continued running on the
QRO station and did S&P with low power on the second.
At the end of day one, I was neck and neck with Andy's QSO count from 2016. But,
he had taken more time off in the first 24 hours, so I was actually behind
target. The second night brought a much needed JA run on 40M. Hardly ever more
than one calling at a time, but a nice steady flow. It is amazing how much
faster your score total increases when you are working 6 pointers that are also
mostly mults. Score was going up by 200K points each hour for a while.
Sunday morning brought a surprise 15M opening into Europe! A surprise because I
had done a propagation forecast before the contest which showed zero probability
for any openings into Europe on that band. The best thing about this opening was
that I had absolutely no noise to speak of, and was able to copy signals 100%
that were barely above the noise. Decided to take a quick look on 10M and was
rewarded with a bunch of USA contacts plus a few Central and South Americans.
Probably should have checked back on 10M more often, based on how many Q's KG0F
had on that band from just to the north of me.
Things finished with a bang on 20 meters. The Europeans all seemed to be copying
me well and I feasted on a steady stream of callers until I had to go QRT in the
last hour to complete my 12 hours off. If I hadn't been dead tired, I would have
kept going, even though the Q's wouldn't count for score. It was that much fun.
Heard many GMCC folks on. The most prominent being KG0F (K0RF) who was
everywhere all the time. Thanks for all of the Q's.
73 Randy K0EU
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