CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2022
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
Class Overlay: Unassisted
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 36.0
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 158
40: 838
20: 1061
15: 857
10: 67
------------
Total: 2981 Prefixes = 924 Total Score = 8,057,280
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
In the 2021 WPXCW cndx were excellent, my station worked well and I was happy
with my score even without a working 20 meter stack and operating Classic using
only ONE radio. The history of WPXCW though is that it does not allow for FB
cndx two years in a row, so on Wednesday/Thursday before the contest, when 15
meter conditions to Asia and Central Asia were incredible in the morning and
evening, I became concerned. I KNEW this meant we would have a CME/radio storm
during WPXCW.
Friday afternoon we were in the path of some nasty Tstorms so I disconnected all
the equipment at 2130z and connected it all back up at 23:30Z. It was the first
of 3 rounds of T-storms Friday/Saturday. I was not surprised as we seem to have
some odd coincidence of bad Tstorms and Geomagnetic storms occurring
simultaneously in major DX contests!
The first hour went well (145 qso's) so I tried some 2BSIQ for the next few
hours which was fun until cndx turned poor as the K went from 1 to 5 and the
Thunder static ramped to S9+, making copying anything very difficult. 2BSIQ is
hard for the unskilled at it (me) but combined with heavy qsb, poor cndx and
rolling static crashes it became impossible. Sorry for sounding like a lid at
times. It was a good learning experience for me and made the first few hours
more interesting and exciting.
By 0200z I noticed that most US signals began sounding hollow and auroral. W1
stations were almost uncopiable due to heavy aurora and even KP2 stations had
flutter! I noticed that I was I losing 20 - 30 qso's each hour compared to
2021, and while a large portion of that was due to no UR or UA/UA9 stations
being worked, I still had great difficulty on 80. Given the SFI of 133, I was
expecting 20 to open to EU but instead it was almost dead by 04z. The K index
spiked to 5 as the Solar Wind rocketed to > 500 km/s with a proton density
peaking > 10.0; a recipe for dead bands.
Saturday AM was frustrating and disappointing for me with weak signals, a poor
run and THEN the middle 20 meter antenna began to produce high swr
intermittently with the audio dropping out. 15 teased and didn't open and 20
became a slog with the top antenna (the middle antenna failed after 10 minutes
of intermittents and constantly irritating my ACOM2000a which would show arc
fault and immediately shut off). The rate was too low to continue so I took 1
hour off and went out to look at the 20 meter problem at the Stackmatch. A quick
inspection showed that everything looked ok, so I switched the top and middle
antennas in the stackmatch ports, went back inside and everything was fine. So
I went back outside and switched back the top and middle antennas to their
original stackmatch ports. However, back inside the middle antenna was dead
again. WTF? OK, I must have missed something. Back outside to the stackmatch
and checked everything. I again switched the middle and top antennas and then
went back inside and everything was fine. This time I transmitted for about 5
minutes in all possible combinations (I went up to 14105 and was not calling cq
or working anyone). Hmmm... Ok, one more time I went back to the tower and
switched the top and middle antennas back to their original ports and once
again, the middle 20 was DEAD. DAMN IT! On Trip #5 to the tower I looked at
the connectors and how they mated with the stackmatch ports. The TOP antenna
worked fine in either the Top or Middle stackmatch ports and the middle antenna
only worked in the TOP stackmatch port. WTF could it possibly be? And then I
noticed it... The PL259 for the TOP antenna was a tiny bit more snug in the
middle stackmatch SO239 than the PL259 for the middle antenna. So it must have
been that the middle antenna PL259 was not quite making enough contact with the
middle stackmatch port SO239. Either that or it was black magic. ;-) And yet
the PL259 of the top antenna must have been slightly thicker and made enough
contact with the middle stackmatch port to work properly. This was bizarre
because up until Saturday morning, I NEVER had this problem with that
stackmatch. EVER. I could not figure out WHY NOW did it fail? Angry and
bewildered, I switched the middle antenna to the top stackmatch port and the top
antenna to the middle stackmatch port and hoped for the best. Inside they
WORKED and I relabeled them on the control box. But that was not all.... While
I was outside I noticed that feedpoint of the NE element of the 80 meter
4-square was sitting about 2' off the ground. When I sling-shotted and restrung
the rope for that element on Wednesday I could have sworn that I tied it in
place with the feedpoint ~ 13' off the ground. And yet here it was, 2' off the
ground. That explains why the loading was slightly off and the performance was
not quite right. An hour of prime-time EU run became an hour of off-time wasted
on stupid stuff.
Back on the radio, cndx were improving on 15 so I qsy'd and began running louder
EU stations. Cndx were still not good and a PY moved in and began cqing on me.
Fearing that he would be heard well (N-S path) and I would lose my run freq on a
very crowded band, I turned the 60' antenna toward PY and asked him to qsy.
After some more cq's and qsy requests he finally moved. And then came back
again. After even more cq's and qsy requests he moved away for good. I then
attempted to rotate the 60' back to EU as the EU stations were getting louder.
It didn't move. Huh? I kept trying to no avail. The rotator was stuck and the
antenna was on PY. ARE YOU SERIOUS? Most contest weekends for the past 8 years
it would not have mattered if the 60' was stuck on PY but this weekend with
higher angle signals it mattered a lot! The antennas at 109' and 90' were too
high and the yagi at 30' was too low.
I did the best that I could but the run faltered and I was really pissed off.
The equipment failures and self-inflicted station issues were demoralizing
especially combined with the lousy cndx. To add salt to the wounds, we were
about to get hit with a much nastier round 2 of T-storms. I went qrt and
disconnected the station. Nothing to do but take off-time and get some sleep.
3 1/2 hours later - after 2 rounds of T-storms and torrential rain, I
re-connected the station and was back on having missed some of the best hours.
Rain "drumming"/Thunder static was horrible. Cndx sucked. I was
seriously contemplating quitting. I was frustrated, disheartened and had had
enough. I decided to continue operating for a while and just cq and not work
hard. No SO2R. No S & P. Just run guys. That meant transmitting on the
middle 20 (top antenna too high) and listening on the lowest antenna while
punching the respective stackmatch buttons to do this after every cq or
transmission, annoying pain in the butt! This went on for about an hour and
then the Rain "Drumming" on the top antenna finally dissipated and
then the Thunder static gradually went away.
And then cndx improved. A LOT! With the K index rapidly falling from 5 to 1 and
the Bz going from -14 to + 5, stations got much, much louder and I even had a
decent JA run on 15. The rates stayed mediocre however, as though a lot of ops
turned off their radios and did not get back on. 40 meters was a huge
disappointment - no run and barely a crawl. 80 meters was a lot better with the
NE element back where it was supposed to be. 104 stations worked vs. 54 the
first night and I felt like I was being heard on 80 as opposed to the struggle
on 40 - 15. 20 opened well to EU at 04z and then promptly shut down after 1
hour when the K spiked back to 5 again and stayed there. UGH! I went qrt not
long after. 20 meters Sunday was just awful. I listened to the Eastern New
England stations run well while I called cq in futility. Even 15 was mediocre
for me most likely because the 90' and 109' antennas were too high and the 30'
was too low. I needed that antenna at 60' pointed at Europe, not PY. 20 did
not fare much better for me either but at least I had the ability to switch
antennas in the stack pointed to EU!
20 was so mediocre that I qsy'ed back to 15 where surprisingly the band not only
stayed open but signals got LOUDER after 19z! I had a decent run with the top
two antennas until it petered out. I had saved 10 for last and as I was
attempting to work some SA stations on 10 around 2030z, I noticed F8CRS, HA8IB
and LZ9W were fairly loud and disappeared on the NE antennas. Intrigued, I
called cq with the 37' pointed SE and began a run of EU stations! A few DL's
peaked S9+, but with extremely fast and deep qsb. And like with most skew-path
signals, the signals were not "solid", but somewhat
"hollow", like being propagated through a tunnel, and with the extreme
qsb, making it tricky to copy. Had the band been packed with stations, the rate
could have been amazing, but at 2100z almost no EU stations were on 10. Why
would they be? In 19 out of 20 other years the band would be dead at 2100z.
LOL! That's part of the charm with WPXCW - you just never know what it going to
happen with propagation that is a combo of Summer and Spring cndx.
Overall I was disappointed with cndx and the struggles that I had all weekend.
Other than 2 really enjoyable hours and a few startling 15 minute windows it was
a slog and not fun, made worse by several station failures and "unforced
errors" on my part. After seeing the scores however, I realize that I did
better than I thought and working SU9VB barefoot on 20 five minutes after the
contest ended was a nice ending.
What is interesting about operating WPXCW every year is how dramatically cndx
change from one year to the next and even hour to hour on the same day during
the same weekend! Equally interesting, and MADDENING, is how quickly parts of
your station can fail, without warning, in some of the most bizarre ways
possible! And then there is the wx. 2022 was the worst year for multiple
well-timed WPXCW T-storms and rain at this qth that I can ever remember. Add it
all up, and as great everything came together in 2021 (even without working 20
meter stacks and operating Classic SO1R), that’s how bad it was this year. The
2022 WPXCW for me was almost the complete opposite of 2021 WPXCW. Just bad luck.
Hopefully the 2023 WPXCW will be a more typical year. Fingers crossed. LOL!
Not all of the dramatic score reduction in the 2022 WPXCW was a result of
station failures, Thunderstorms, and lousy propagation. The horrible war
situation in Ukraine and the decision by CQ Magazine to exclude all Ukraine,
Russian and Byelorussian hams from participating has also had a major impact. I
was curious as to extent of that impact so I made a spreadsheet analysis of my
WPXCW logs from 2018 – 2022.
Year Score Qsos Mults UR/UA/EW %Qsos %Mults EU % US %Qsos %Mults
Qsos Mults Qsos Qsos Mults
‘22 8057280 2981 924 10 9 0.3% 1.0% 59.1% 919 347 30.8% 37.6%
‘21 11424036 3412 1093 395 141 11.6% 12.9% 59.9% 1087 378 31.9% 34.6%
‘20 7143180 2618 948 277 150 10.6% 15.8% 58.1% 907 304 34.6% 32.1%
‘19 8916416 2892 1016 348 141 12.0% 13.9% 56.0% 950 285 32.8% 28.1%
‘18 8841349 2830 979 354 142 12.5% 14.5% 61.8% 808 274 28.6% 28.0%
I was surprised to the extent of the qsos and mults accounted for by those three
countries and if you count the 3 and 6 pt qsos, they account for 20 - 25% of my
annual score! The % of contest qsos by region did not change much in 2022 and
while the US qsos declined, the US mults as a % of the total mults increased
significantly. I don’t know to what extent these ratios were impacted by the
high angle 60’ antenna on 15 stuck on PY rather than pointed at the US, or the
missed run hours on 15 on Saturday or the ineffective 80 m 4-squre on Friday
night. And clearly I underestimated the importance of working more US stations
– this was reflected in my choice of bands and where I was pointing my
antennas at different times. I will definitely make some changes in my operating
strategy for next year!
Congrats to Dave, K5GN (NU5A) on an exceptional NON-Assisted score and the US
win!
The best part of operating is saying hello to so many old friends and this means
more to me with each passing year as I see that so many of the people that I
have operated with in the Caribbean and elsewhere are joining the ranks of
Silent Keys. RIP my good friends.
WPXCW continues to be the most challenging contest to operate due to the
combination of wildly unpredictable propagation and the difficulty of selecting
off-times, which most years is impacted by local weather cndx. This contest is
NEVER the same twice. Even after operating this contest for 40+ years I am
still learning. LOL!
Tnx for all the qso and the mults!
73
Bob, KQ2M
kq2m@kq2m.com
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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