CQ WPX RTTY Contest - 2023
Call: P49X
Operator(s): W0YK
Station: P40L/P49Y
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: FK52al
Operating Time (hrs): 30
OpMode: 2BSIQ
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 181
40: 667
20: 510
15: 953
10: 854
------------
Total: 3165 Prefixes = 866 Total Score = 10,375,546
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
Like many others, I really enjoyed the contest. As typical, conditions and
activity were “unusual”, at least from here in Aruba. While adding
diversity and interest to the event, it can be frustrating and annoying at
times!
10m was open from sunrise to sunset, no waffling other than temporary solar
events. 40m was mostly all right but 80m was dismal. 15m was the “best”
band and 20m suffered from loss of activity to 15m and 10m.
Saturday around 1530 UTC there was a near total RF blackout at this QTH …
except for 15m. Within 10 minutes, both 20m and 10m had zero signals on the
band scope, while 15m was going strong almost without impact. I considered
taking a break, but it’s hard to stop running, and 10m started to come back 20
minutes later so I persevered through the lull.
Then, there is the human element in this game. I caused some self-inflicted
errors which could be discouraging or alternatively exciting for the
“learning” gained (;>). First, as often the case, I struggled with RFI
problems getting setup for the contest. The original owner, Carl AI6V/P49V,
only used the station for SO1R and occasional classic MS (no mult transmitter).
Thus, interstation RFI issues were never encountered, must less dealt with. I
learned some things about the RFI here that explained extreme frustration in
prior operations. I was doing things that made the problems worse.
As in my September operation where I “blew up” two radios with RFI overload,
yet another radio lost a T/R diode this trip in a not-fully-understood RF
overload event. Thus, going into the contest Friday night I was not confident
in the station reliability.
As a stretch reference point, I posted my 2013 WPX RTTY hourly stats table on
the operating shelf directly in front of me. Numbers were better the first hour
and then quickly went south for the rest of the weekend. Nothing was obviously
“wrong”, but the data fell further and further behind the 2013 reference.
To be fair, 2013 was my best claimed result and nearly tied in my three highest
log-checked results out of 14 consecutive years, pre-COVID. This weekend’s
claimed result is the lower than any of those prior 14 outings. Have I learned
nothing in 14 years?!
I was never able to get enough incoming rate to push my logged rate up above
200/hour as in past years. This may be due to lower activity and local
propagation characteristics, hard to say. All I know, operationally, is that
there were never enough callers to achieve an hour above 200. I did notice the
10-minute rate meter at 220 a couple times but that doesn’t make a 200+ hour.
I also wonder if the propagation was so good for NA and EU that antennas were
east-west, leaving us ‘poor soles” in SA out of the action. (This comment
is inserted to show the NA Mid-West stations that anyone can complain about
their QTH!)
The biggest self-inflicted issue was Saturday morning when the 15m amp was in
Standby for several hours before I (embarrassingly) noticed it. 10m was out
performing 15m by 3x in QSO rate. I kept check 20m and it looked worse. Turns
out that one of my several RFI problems was the 10m station faulting the 15m
amplifier. My on-the-fly work-around was to move the 10m station from a
5-element Yagi interlaced on the 15m boom, to a 2-element SteppIR on another
tower.
However, a second self-inflicted problem was discovered Sunday when I realized
that the SteppIR was configured for 180 degrees, i.e., South America. (This was
intentional so I could instantly switch to it for a new SA mult.) Ignorance is
bliss as Dean N6BV used to tell me, “think that you’re loud, rather than
focusing on a compromised antenna—it’s worth 10 dB gain!” Frankly, I
really didn’t notice any “better” 10-meter operation on Sunday with the
SteppIR oriented north to NA and EU. Perhaps Dean has a point there.
I love making QSOs with all you folks. When someone worked me on our fourth
band, I sent them my other-band QRV if it was the fifth band we needed.
Amazingly, 9/10 of you showed up in a minute or two! That’s a lot of fun.
Another fun snippet is when you all stick around during a pileup, assuming I
stacked your call and will quickly work you. I had one 5-deep stack that
resulted in 5 QSOs. My part is working everyone as fast as possible. Your part
is patience! What really gave me a high were the handful of instances where one
of you “tail-ended” expertly to give me your call to stack while a QSO was
in process. What a rush! OK, maybe I’m having too much fun.
I’ve rambled on enough and want to sleep. Thanks to literally everyone who is
in the log. Yes, you folks that answer my CQ with your exchange (clearly from
the FT “skip Tx1” technique) are “loved” as well. Your QSO is just as
valuable as those “classic old-school” operators who follow the same old
pattern of just sending their call sign. In return, I hope you appreciate my
replying with both my exchange and QSL messages in one transmission. I’m just
trying to step up to new age operating.
As always, many thinks to John P40L/W6LD and Andy P49Y/AE6Y who share their
wonderful Aruba station with me. Plus, they each worked me 5 bands, as well, a
bunch of you all!
73,
Ed P49X (W0YK)
K3S/P3/KPod, Alpha 91B and Alpha 86
FilterMax low power bandpass filters, SixPak, two StackMatches, Green Heron
rotor controllers
3 Networked ThinkPad X220s, BT mice and keyboards, 19” 4:3 displays
WriteLog 12.69B, 2xMMTTY 1.70K, 4x2Tone 16.02a encoder/decoders, Mortty 2.0 with
modified TinyFSK 1.1.0 for each radio/PC
Tower 1: 80’ with 2-element shorty-forty, 5-el 20m Yagi, 80m Inverted-V, 2-el
SteppIR at 35’ due north and double-L vertical for 160m
Tower 2: 55’ with single boom interlaced 5-el 15m and 5-el 10m Yagi
Tower 3: 45’ with JK Mid-Tri tribander
Beverages (4): West US, East US, Europe, un-terminated Africa/VK/ZL with
versatile K9AY switch
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: W0YK
-------------- 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 0 49 95 0 0 144 144 4.5
0100 0 0 64 92 0 0 156 300 9.5
0200 0 0 61 73 0 0 134 434 13.7
0300 0 22 70 1 0 0 93 527 16.7
0400 0 21 92 0 0 0 113 640 20.2
0500 0 25 62 0 0 0 87 727 23.0
0600 0 27 56 0 0 0 83 810 25.6
0700 0 12 57 0 0 0 69 879 27.8
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 879 27.8
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 879 27.8
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 879 27.8
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 879 27.8
1200 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 881 27.8
1300 0 0 0 0 32 92 124 1005 31.8
1400 0 0 0 0 36 90 126 1131 35.7
1500 0 0 0 0 19 75 94 1225 38.7
1600 0 0 0 0 31 80 111 1336 42.2
1700 0 0 0 0 72 52 124 1460 46.1
1800 0 0 0 5 82 40 127 1587 50.1
1900 0 0 0 0 76 58 134 1721 54.4
2000 0 0 0 0 99 62 161 1882 59.5
2100 0 0 0 2 76 56 134 2016 63.7
2200 0 0 0 73 60 0 133 2149 67.9
2300 0 0 0 62 54 0 116 2265 71.6
0000 0 0 0 30 29 0 59 2324 73.4
0100 0 0 14 22 0 0 36 2360 74.6
0200 0 0 38 50 0 0 88 2448 77.3
0300 0 31 36 5 0 0 72 2520 79.6
0400 0 17 34 0 0 0 51 2571 81.2
0500 0 26 34 0 0 0 60 2631 83.1
0600 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
0700 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
0800 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
0900 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
1000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
1100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
1200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
1300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
1400 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2631 83.1
1500 0 0 0 0 35 34 69 2700 85.3
1600 0 0 0 0 47 43 90 2790 88.2
1700 0 0 0 0 52 47 99 2889 91.3
1800 0 0 0 0 49 36 85 2974 94.0
1900 0 0 0 0 50 44 94 3068 96.9
2000 0 0 0 0 43 40 83 3151 99.6
2100 0 0 0 0 11 3 14 3165 100.0
2200 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3165 100.0
2300 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3165 100.0
------------------------------------------------------
Total 0 181 667 510 953 854 3165
Gross QSOs=3201 Dupes=36 Net QSOs=3165
Unique callsigns worked = 1913
The best 60 minute rate was 161/hour from 0058 to 0157
The best 30 minute rate was 172/hour from 0001 to 0030
The best 10 minute rate was 210/hour from 2043 to 2052
The best 1 minute rates were:
6 QSOs/minute 1 times.
5 QSOs/minute 8 times.
4 QSOs/minute 105 times.
3 QSOs/minute 320 times.
2 QSOs/minute 593 times.
1 QSOs/minute 553 times.
There were 1735 bandchanges and 1084 (34.2%) probable 2nd radio QSOs.
Number of letters in callsigns
Letters # worked
-----------------
3 25
4 1203
5 1144
6 778
7 11
8 2
9 2
Multi-band QSOs
---------------
1 bands 1193
2 bands 381
3 bands 190
4 bands 105
5 bands 44
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 38 250 168 394 343
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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