Fri night rates in Ohio were below average but open to EU. Sat night
was slow with few signals as the night progressed, and 51 dupes. :<
My 3830 summary:
W3HKK: 18:45 hrs OTA 694 Q's ( plus another 51 dupes (6.9%) that dont
count of course) =57 Sections + 36 DX entities - Score: 186,744 pts. (
the 4th highest score out of my seven CQWW160CW log submissions.)
Struggled to achieve a contest rate of 35 Q's/hr, with a high rated of
108/HR early on Friday night.
===================================================================
STATION: IC7610 - Acom 1000 amp - N1MM+ Logging software - cw buddy
memory keyer/memory/real time keyboard supplementing the 8 cw memories
in the 7610.
TX ANTENNA: No radials! This year I failed to lay out my 26 x 100 ft
radial system before the wx turned too cold to do so. So I was running
700w into a 1/4 wave 160m INV-L with a vertical leg of 52 ft, and the
78 ft of wire sloping down to the E, ending about 15 ft above ground.
The only RF ground for the INV-L was a single 8 ft copper clad steel
ground rod dating to 2009, plus of course the earth beneath it. A 50
ft black walnut tree was my antenna support. Ohio loam conductivity
must be pretty good!
That means the L puts out a slightly stronger signal to the W. And as
usual, I have very good results towards the US West Coast, working
many CA (19) & AZ(8) stations in particular. .
RX ANTENNA: SAL 30 ( four short delta loops 30 ft tall,
electronically rotatable in 8 directions.)
CONTEST CATEGORY: Single Op - High Power ( 700w) - Assisted
CONDITIONS: FRIDAY night was about average, with some decent openings
into EU. And many strong US sigs, but not as many of them. ie My best
actual hourly rate in 2022 was about 65% of my Personal Record Year of
2020; and my score was also about 65% of my Personal Best Year of 2020
- which happened to be at the solar minimum. My 2022 average contest
rate ( total Q's divided by total hours OTA) was a humbling 35/hour
due eto the very slow 2nd night. It was hard work to say the least.
SATURDAY night had MUCH slower rates, and far fewer - and weaker -
sigs. Required a lot of searching and pouncing to separate fresh meat
from stations already in the log. But still, I was called 51 times by
stations who had already worked me. Since its always faster to just
work the dupes than try to explain that theyre a dupe, you just work
them and move on. At one stretch Sun morning, almost 50% of my CQ
replies were dupes. So I switched to S&P.
As sigs thinned out, many were just above the noise, requiring agile
fingers on the eight direction SAL30 RX antenna, switching from W to
E, N to S, and directions in between. The 20 db F/B often made all the
difference.
SS CYCLE: : With the bottom of the SS cycle now history, Ole Sol was
again throwing out particles that tended to mask Top Band signals
passing through the ionosphere, by adding 20 dB or more attenuation.
DX: Hams in the northern latitudes complained about poor to
nonexistant conditions this year. I heard no Scandanavian stations,
and few German stations among the central, eastern and southern
European stations coming through.
I saw a few JA spots but heard nothing. And it took two days of
trying to work KL7SB, the Alaska contest station, and even then they
were barely above the noise floor when I worked them Sun morning
around 6 am. Only two KH6 stations got in the log, also with very weak
signals. And the ZL and VK spots were few and far between - again with
none heard in Ohio.
COVID 19: continued to quite adversely affect the number of
DXpeditions OTA from places like Africa, the Pacific, S.A., and C. A.
etc.
PS EARLY RETURNS: W3HKK LOG PLACEMENT IN 3830 - AS OF 9:30AM TODAY
(MONDAY):
164th in World among ALL logs submitted
64TH PLACE IN THE US: AMONG ALL LOGS SUBMITTED IN EVERY CATEGORY.
35TH PLACE IN THE US IN MY CATEGORY: AMONG ALL LOGS SUBMITTED (
US-HP-ASSISTED).
6TH PLACE AMONG ALL 8 LAND LOGS.
de Bob W3HKK
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