The CQ 160 was a fun but very noisy experience this year from the southern
hemisphere, with heavy QRN for most of the time over S9. The only way to
operate the contest was to put the AF gain at maximum, the RF gain at
minimum and switch between the dipole and the Beverage, looking for the
antenna with the best signal/noise ratio.
With the loud static crashes, it was often a case of trying to pull out one
letter of a call at a time and some contacts took up to 15 minutes to
complete, particularly in the last few hours of the contest.
Altogether, around 105 QSOs were logged at this end, with moderate openings
into the USA on both nights (no eastern seaboard stations were logged at
all, with the farthest east W2VO in NY state. The west coast was almost as
absent here, with only a single CA QSO. European stations were worked with
difficulty around their sunset, but there was a short brief peak around VK6
sunrise on the Sunday.
Best NA conditions seemed to be into CO, GA, MN, IL, OH, MI areas, with a
few TX and further south. W8TOP had an outstanding signal on Saturday
night, as did W8JI and W4WA (the latter 11 minutes before sunset!).
Best DX was A45XR, BT1WW, W2VO, with good activity from SE Asia including
VR2BG, 9M2AX, 9M6NA, YC0LOW, VQ9SS. From further south, ZL2JR and ZL6QH
were also very active. Plenty of JA activity in the window, although some
of the regulars weren't heard and signals were quite weak.
In summary, lots of QRN and relatively poor conditions made things
difficult, but this was made up for by the high activity levels. Thanks to
all those who called me patiently through our summer QRN.
Vy 73,
Steve, VK6VZ
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