CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: NN7CW
Operator(s): NN7CW
Station: NN7CW
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: FL
Operating Time (hrs): 35
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 6
80: 231
40: 1002
20: 1024
15: 460
10: 227
------------
Total: 2950 Prefixes = 897 Total Score = 5,686,980
Club:
Comments:
The WPX is my favorite contest and this year I wanted to be well-prepared to see
what I can squeeze out of my new setup. Unfortunately, Murphy teamed up with the
god of thunder, so at Friday zero UTC I was quietly watching one of the many
thunderstorms and marveled the masses of rain that the thick cloud cover right
above my QTH released relentlessly. An hour later I was finally off to the
races, but instead of some cool grayline propagation, I saw that one of my
rotors started turning as soon as I was transmitting and my brand-new Dell
keyboards weren't faring well in an RF-infested environment either. Some ferrite
clamps fixed the rotor issue, but the keyboard problem prevailed. I kept going
until I noticed that the cursor would not only occasionally go up to a random
QSO in the log, but also add Is and Ps to the already logged QSOs. Eventually I
decided to get the old trusty Microsoft keyboards out of the closet and after
fixing the broken log entries, things turned for the better. The whole mess cost
me about an hour, but at least it seems to be fixed.
Friday night revealed the usual mayhem on 20, but also tons of business on 15
which, of course, I mostly missed. The wx service predicted t-storms throughout
Saturday and scattered ones on Sunday, so I decided to go with only one short
break Sunday morning to reserve plenty of time for inevitable breaks. I ran on
20 and S&P'd on 40, because 40 was a noisy mess. Plenty of repeats (sorry
about that!) and the same happened on 80 after 20 dried up. 160 was a bust
throughout the whole weekend, so only six Q's down there.
Saturday morning (about 9:30AM local) I discovered that 15 and 10 were hopping,
so I decided to strike while the iron is hot and didn't go back to 20 before the
middle of the afternoon. I abandoned 10 despite more possible Q's for the sake
of quantity and DX on 20, which was kind-a sad around this time of the cycle.
The next round of t-storms arrived on time for the Saturday grayline, so I had
to shut down the station for a little more than two hours. Later that night the
static was once again considerable, so 80 and 160 didn't yield anything worth
mentioning. After taking my planned 4.5h break, I ended up running on 40 as long
as I could.
Running on 40 on Sunday included working a bunch of VKs and a few JAs with the
sun up in the sky around 8AM. A couple of times I had intervals of VKs and VA,
which was fun. After 40 dried up and 15 and 10 not being half as good as they
were the day before, I pretty much S&P'd my way through the remaining time
on 20 with a short run for CA stations on 15. Because of more forecast t-storms
in the late afternoon I didn't take another break and finished up early at
3:15pm local time.
Despite the noisy conditions, my station hiccups and the consequences of the
worldwide lock-down I had a lot of fun. I noticed many new calls from not so
unusual places, so people were making the most of it. 73 y'all and till next
time!
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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