CQ 160-Meter Contest, SSB - 2023
Call: K5TR
Operator(s): AI5A
Station: K5TR
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: STX
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 543 State/Prov = 50 Countries = 12 Total Score = 76,322
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
I (AI5A) operated at K5TR for this contest. I arrived Friday around 6pm local
time, two hours after the contest had started. When I arrived I found that
people on the air were already starting to collect contacts. I spent the first
few minutes warming up with some S&P and then found a space and parked for
a
while to run contacts. I did not have a goal or know what to expect, as I am
newer to contesting, and this was my first time doing this contest (and second
time doing a contest from K5TR). George looked at previous scores and told me
that getting to 500 would be a good goal, and that indeed became my goal.
I took occasional bio-and-food breaks every 2-3 hours but otherwise operated
from around 6:30pm to 3:30am local time on the first day. The band seemed to
work well for domestic contacts including some VE and V31 (and KH6AQ!), but I
did not work much in the way of Europe. I did work England - thank you to G5K!
Around midnight local time, the receive antennas at the station stopped working
due to a relay issue. As George/K5TR was away at the time, I was not quite sure
what to do for a few minutes. My options were to switch to the beverage, which
seemed not sensitive enough for how the band was, or to use the transmit
antennas as receive antennas as well, which is what I ultimately ended up
doing. I know that I missed out on contacts from this (I could hear many
people in the noise, but not nearly enough to even attempt to pull them out),
but by and large it did work, and kept me in the game. The G5K contact was
made in this configuration.
Overall things went well the first day, minus that issue. By 3:30am, things
slowed down a ton. I had basically no rate at all. I would get a caller every
5-10 minutes and that was it. And slowly it thinned out even more than that. I
did another round of S&P but found that I had already worked everyone who
was
still operating. So I decided that would be a good time to sleep for a few
hours. I paused at 340 contacts. I slept around 3:30am and woke up around 6am.
Interestingly, when I woke up, the receive antennas seemed to be fixed, even
though nobody changed anything. I guess a relay clicked into place or
something.
Though I was still very tired, I somehow managed to get on the air and make a
few contacts. I still did not have very much rate, but I picked up a new mult,
N0WWT in ND. An hour or so later, I went back to sleep until around 2pm or so.
Of course, during the day 160m was dead. I did check every once in a while to
see if any locals were on, but alas the band was completely quiet. I spent the
afternoon hunting some POTA activators on other bands, and giving some SCQP
participants a CW contact. Figuring out how to lower the CW speed of the key
at the station took longer than I will admit and ended with me calling and
asking George/K5TR (I was not aware that the logging program controlled the CW
speed of the physical paddle). It is also interesting using paddles at
different stations. What I have learned is that I set the action and travel on
my keys much higher than what most people have them set to. I do not mind less
action, but it is just not what I am used to. Alas, I mostly figured out the
key and was able to fumble my way through some CW contacts to pass some time.
At around 4pm, I decided to make a food run. I found a gas station close-ish
to the station, and bought some not-so-fresh pizza, and a few microwave Kraft
Mac & Cheese bowls for later (there is a microwave and water at the
station).
When I got back, around 5pm, it was time to get back to work. I first did a
S&P across the band, but did not pick up many (any?) new contacts. Soon
after,
I parked and started running contacts.
I did not get as much rate the second day as the first, and the band seemed to
be in slightly worse shape. In fact, most of the contacts I made were in the
noise and I had to work pretty hard to pull them out, and ask for lots of
repeats. I learned that I need to work on my ability to pull people out of the
noise. I struggle with it more than I realized.
The struggle was made harder because there was a huge thunderstorm a few states
north, in Oklahoma and moving east. This caused many, many, MANY static crashes
and those started at around 10:30pm local time and lasted well into the morning
(they were still happening at 4am local). This made it even harder to pull
contacts out of the noise. It was, however, interesting to watch
lightningmaps.org and listen to the static crashes, and see the lightning show
up on the map a second or two later. I did not realize just how real-time that
site was, before this. Luckily the storm moved east and not south, but that did
not stop the static crashes.
Although conditions were worse the second day, I did manage to pick up some new
mults. At around 4am local I picked up BC from VE7DX. As with most other
stations, he was in the noise, but I was able to pull him out. I took a fair
number of breaks throughout the night the second night, because rate was so
slow and it was a bit of a chore to listen to myself calling CQ endlessly. But
I managed to pull in a number of contacts. To keep with the 500 goal, I wanted
to make sure I had at least 500 non-dupe contacts, and I knew I had a few
dupes. So I figured out how many contacts I needed to make up for the dupes.
Soon enough, I passed that number.
At around 5am, people started to wake up. I know this because rate picked up
slightly and also because the frequency I had been parked on for a few hours
at that point with no issues, started getting encroached on, on both sides. By
6am local, I had picked up a few new mults, though that quickly thinned out.
After calling into the void for a while with no new contacts, I did a round of
S&P and picked up a few contacts (no new mults). It is unfortunate that I
did
not get Alaska, Utah or Idaho. It would have been cool to get WAS 160 in a
weekend and those were the only three missing.
I ended with 543 contacts, after de-duping, and 62 mults (50 domestic,
12 countries).
Thanks for all the contacts, and thanks for bearing with me if I had trouble
pulling you out of the noise especially when the receive antenna issues
happened.
I'm looking forward to the next contest!
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