Hi Holger,
A = 22 K =4 Active geomagnetic cndx with aurora clearly present at the start of
the contest. I even heard US signals with polar flutter! Tremendous
absorption on the polar paths with ZERO sunspots and bottom of the cycle
conditions. I didn’t even HEAR a zone 17 station on 20 until Sunday when the K
dropped to ZERO. In fact the cutoff on the polar paths was so sharp, that I
worked SIX Asiatic Russian stations in Zone 16 (UA9 S, T and W calls) but ZERO
in zone 17. In 44 years of contesting I have never experienced that!
While JA activity may be declining, the fact that you worked more EU this
weekend than JA or the USA was entirely because of conditions and I wouldn’t
expect them to be much better over the next 4 years as we trough and then
slowly start up into cycle 25 in 2 – 3 years.
73 and tnx for our qso’s in CQWWCW!
Bob, KQ2M
As for slower CW: We see a trend of declining contest activity from Asia,
especially Japan. I think this was our first major international contest
where we worked more EU stations on 80, 40 & 20 than AS's or NA's!!! We also
worked more EU's than AS's in total. This is unheard of. We have a lot of
slow times from down here and by slowing down to below 30 WPM we felt we got
more callers (clearly straight keys & elbugs). It may be an aging problem.
We have a few own members in their late 70's and they state openly, that
nowadays they struggle with high speed CW for more than 30-60 min and feel
uncomfortable in the chair.
----------------- C o n t i n e n t S u m m a r y -----------------
160 80 40 20 15 10 Total Pct
---------------------------------------------------------------------
North America 0 134 700 431 1164 119 2548 44.8
South America 0 3 18 48 21 8 98 1.7
Europe 0 135 706 539 114 0 1494 26.2
Asia 0 89 370 334 539 29 1361 23.9
Africa 0 1 14 8 5 0 28 0.5
Oceania 2 16 45 41 40 12 156 2.7
??? 0 0 2 3 1 1 7 0.1
--------------------------------------------------------------
Total 2 378 1855 1404 1884 169 5692
Enough complaining! It was a great contest, we enjoyed all the QSO's and
sure will be back for the next one!
73 Holger, ZL3IO - one of the ZM4T crew
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