[3830] WPX SSB VE4EAR SOAB(TS) HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: VE4EAR
Operator(s): VE4EAR
Station: VE4EAR

Class: SOAB(TS) HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 35

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:   63
   40:  280
   20:  354
   15:   34
   10:    0
------------
Total:  731  Prefixes = 333  Total Score = 724,941

Club: 

Comments:

Wow that was tough!
Friday night 40 was pretty decent for NA qso's but noise was pretty high and
other than a few SA stations, no DX was worked. 80m was next to impossible with
very high QRN and Aurora noise. 

Saturday saw 20m slow to open with EU open for only 20 minutes around 1500 UTC.
The signals that were heard all had the polar flutter on them. Later in the
afternoon, EU opened again but very difficult to be heard. At about 2100 UTC it
was if someone turned the ionosphere off and 20m just died. No SA, no JA, only a
handful of strong west coast stations.

I could not find anyone new to work on 40m and even CQ'ing yield a rate of 10
per hour. Went to 80m and condityions were a bit better than Friday night.

Sunday stared horribly. We were experiencing a winter storm with 90km/h wind
gusts and freezing rain and snow. The vertical antenna stopped working
properley and I suspected the wind had damaged the elevated radials. The
doublet was blowing around like crazy and the VSWR was all over the place. I
wasn't going to be foolish enough to get up on the roof in that kind of
weather. I plugged along the best I could with the dipole.

Sunday morning  EU opened up again with plenty of signals. I could hear them
without a any difficulty but they could not hear me. Even running 700W into the
doublet, seemed of little use. Again all the signals to EU had that polar
flutter.

Managed a few runs on 20m and finally 15m opened up. Not great but at least
some SA and carribean stations were worked. No ZL or African stations were
heard. Obviously a lot of US stations were working the same stations I was but
I could not heard a single one of them. The closest signals were a couple XE
and a CO station.

Late in the afternoon, 2100 UTC, my first JA stations called me for a change.
Sunday. Soon I was working more JA's than I have done in previous contests with
far better signals. At the same time, the CT1-CT3 were pounding in here and I
was breaking their pileups on the first call. Not a normal occurrence for me:)

Bottom line it was 48 hours of ups and downs. Starting with bad conditions, bad
weather, an aurora that feeds off my RF and lousy antennas. It ended on a bit
better note with a new personal high Q total.

Thanks to CQ and everyone for their patience and endless requests for repeats.
Also a special thank you to VA7ST for the motivation of keeping my butt in the
chair and for the sound thrashing!

73 

Ed


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