[3830] WPX SSB WX5S(@W6YX) M/2 HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: WX5S
Operator(s): N6DE,AE6EJ,K6ENT,AD6FX,AE6KU,W6LD,N7MH,K6UFO
Station: W6YX

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 43.3

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    1
   80:  233
   40:  317
   20: 1135
   15: 1092
   10: 1258
------------
Total: 4036  Prefixes = 902  Total Score = 6,953,518

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

I'd like to thank Mark, K6UFO, for organizing our effort in this contest.  We
had almost everything working by Wednesday evening before the contest due to
Mark's guidance.  The final touch was getting the director and reflector
replaced on our 4-element 40-meter M2 Yagi by John, W6LD, just 2 hours before
the contest started.  Thanks to Matt, WX5S, for letting us use his callsign
again even though he ended up at NR6O this year.  We appreciated the efforts of
several rookie operators and look forward to their continued participation in
future contests.

The two bands that really worked well for us were 20 and 10 meters.  For some
reason 15 meters just didn't play well for us this weekend.  Maybe it's time to
retire the old Telrex 6-element and to get the 155CA up higher than 30 feet now
that the sunspots are declining.

Our fear in this contest was that we wouldn't get any (or many) European
prefixes because of the solar flux levels.  Last year 15 meters was open to
Europe mornings and evenings, but this year we just had brief openings in the
mornings.

Our only QSO on 160 meters was NR6O, our only 6-bander.

On 80 we had some good stateside runs with N6DE and K6ENT operating the first
night.  We had a small JA run on Saturday morning and more JAs on Sunday.  We
had no operators scheduled between 0715Z and 1100Z on Sunday so we could have
done a little better on 80.  No Europeans were worked and the only Africans were
islanders - CQ9K, EA8AH, and EA8ZS.

We heard several Europeans on 40 on Saturday but only worked EA5DFV.  We worked
another 16 Europeans on 40 on Sunday, about half of which were new prefixes.  We
only worked 95 JAs on 40, partly because of the off-time on Sunday and also
because we had to divide time between 80, 40, and 20.  I'm looking forward to CW
weekend when it's much easier to work both EU and JA on 40.

20 meters was the band where we had our highest rates of the contest with 3
consecutive hours of 100+ per hour including a 156 hour at 0200Z the first day. 
Russians and other former Soviet republics were very loud between 0330Z and
0530Z.  We heard JAs CQing on 20 much of the day, but mostly worked them between
0400Z and 1100Z.  20 meters was open to non-Russian Europe between about 1300Z
and 2000Z here.  We were able to work most EU stations, but we were never heard
by YL6W, HG6N, GM7V, and IU9S despite calling many times.

15 meters was disappointing because of the short EU openings and only 282 JAs. 
On Sunday the band opened earlier to EU, but only to the former Yugoslavia (9A,
YU) to begin with.  We only seemed to be able to work EU countries on a line
from Finland down to Italy except for ED5KB in Spain.  Other EU worked on 15
were OH, OH0, SP, OK, OM, HA, YU, Z3, S5, 9A, ER, EN, and I.  One highlight on
15 was having 5U7JK call us.

10 meters faded in and out.  When it was good we could work several per minute
but this was never sustained for more than a few minutes at a time.  Quite a few
stations faded out completely before exchanging reports.  We worked one European
on 10, OH3RR.  I was surprised to be called by two V51 stations within 10
minutes of each other.  On Sunday we were plagued by a persistent local
jammer.

Looking at the continent distribution I was struck by the fact that we worked
fewer EU than either VE or South America.

                   160    80    40    20    15    10   ALL
                   ---    --    --    --    --    --   ---
  USA calls   =      1   156   145   682   500   883  2367
  VE calls    =      0    23    18    59    53    57   210
  N.A. calls  =      0    11    10    35    38    44   138
  S.A. calls  =      0     4    13    52    65   117   251
  Euro calls  =      0     0    17   125    41     1   184
  Afrc calls  =      0     3     5    13     8     7    36
  Asia calls  =      0     6     2    49    38     1    96
  JA calls    =      0    28    95    82   282   107   594
  Ocen calls  =      0     2    12    38    67    41   160

-Mike, N7MH


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