CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2022
Call: KE2D
Operator(s): KE2D
Station: KE2D
Class: Single Op Assisted HP
QTH: New Jersey
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 826 State/Prov = 59 Countries = 43 Total Score = 249,696
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
I didn't do as well as last year but not horrible.
I've never been impressed with my inverted L on 160m and wanted to try something
different. I only had a few hours in the afternoon to improvise something.
There was already about 3/4" of snow on the ground that we'd gotten during
the day so I wasn't going to be able to do anything elaborate with such short
time and under those conditions. I spent about 2.5 hours before the start
lengthening and tuning my 80m inverted V to convert it to 160m. On the analyzer
it looked good when I was done but I wasn't sure a horizontally polarized
antenna would do as well as the inverted L. I still had that antenna if I
wanted to switch back. I wound up starting about half an hour late because the
antenna work took longer than I expedted. I switched back and forth between the
antennas a few times but the Inverted V seemed to have the edge. I watched
skimmer dB reports of my CQs and switched back and forth on a couple of the
runs. It seemed that the inverted V got reports from the same skimmers of just
a few dB more on average. This is good but it also means my Inverted L is
probably as bad as I feared. However, there were a few stations that I could
only work with the Inverted L. P40AA just sent ?? when I called him on the
inverted V but answered on second call with the inverted L. Maybe good to have
both options.
I heard a few European stations during the first evening but only worked one of
them (he actually called me). However, at EU sunrise, beginning at 0542z, EU
became much easier and I managed to get a total of 70 ten pointers in the log.
Despite this, I could already tell my QSO total was down vs the first night last
year.
The winter storm was going strong all Friday night and the band seemed noisy.
It didn't sound like snow static, just noisy overall with some more static
crashes than I expected for this time of year. Probably from the storm. The
weather people had said to expect thunder snow several times on Friday.
The second night was not as noisy but the conditions were not as good. Although
I worked 2 EU in the late afternoon, those would be my last ones of the contest.
There was no enhancement on EU sunrise the second night and there were fewer
fresh stateside stations to work the second night than I had hoped also although
I did manage to work a few more domestic mults. I got up early Sunday morning
and added about 40 more Qs to the log but nothing exotic and no new mults. I
also got on for the last 90 minutes but only worked 11 more stations. The band
map and available window had spots of 56 EU stations and I could actually hear a
few of the stronger ones but could not get through.
Thanks to everyone for the QSOs and your patience.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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