[3830] CQ160 SSB K7XC Single Op HP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, SSB

Call: K7XC
Operator(s): K7XC
Station: K7XC

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: DM09nm
Operating Time (hrs): 16

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 408  State/Prov = 48  Countries = 6  Total Score = 50,004

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

Hi All,

SSB contesting is not as much fun as it used to be. Back when I was in my 20s
and 30s it was an awesome experience but now phone is just such a chore... It
makes my head hurt! CW FOREVER! LOL. 

So I figured I would show up Fri Night, activate the mult for the deserving,
and see what I could do to put a dent in my 160M SSB WAS totals. What I didn't
expect was to have so much fun do it!

I stayed up until sunrise Sat morning working the contest and was amazed at how
the conditions kept slowly drifting up and down in signal strength. At one point
the W1's were S9+ for about 15 minutes and the NV feeding frenzy that ensued was
a thing of pure joy. It just proves that operating from a rare mult is easily
worth 10DB or more!

Later as the terminator began to work its way across the the country, Stations
who were barely audible earlier started to come screaming out of the noise. I
was amazed that I was able to work many eastern stations well after their
sunrise.

My back woke me 3AM this past Thursday. While waiting for the ibuprophen to
kick in I found and worked VP6DX on 160M SSB, so I felt no overwhelming need to
join that chaos until well after it had settled down. During the peak of the
activity, the VP6 commanded plenty of attention which left more room to CQ than
I remember from previous contests as so many were calling them.

Later on, it was obvious I was the only NV station still actively CQing and the
constant stream of callers was a real kick in the butt! I only wish I had some
kind of rcv ant as many were too weak to copy. Yes... all season long I have
operated 160M using only the Inv L on transmit and rcv. Time to buld a rcv
loop!

Saturday evening the condx seemed to be better but my inability to get any
sleep during the day made operating like thinking through dense fog. I worked
in spurts while taking many breaks to refocus. Around 9PM I gave up and called
it a night. Sunday AM I found barely enough active to nudge the score above
50K. All in all I'm pretty happy with the results...

The station here is rather simple consisting of a IC-746, 800W from an ALPHA 78
into a 175' long Inv L up 35' with only seven 1/4 wave radials.

After operating the W7RN super station last week, I wonder what I could have
done if I had his full gallon and 120' verticle on Xmit and his 4 square rcv
array!

73s de Tim - K7XC - DM09nm... sk


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