[3830] WPX SSB VK8PDX SOAB(R) LP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: VK8PDX
Operator(s): VK8PDX
Station: VK8PDX

Class: SOAB(R) LP
QTH: Alice Springs NT
Operating Time (hrs): 36

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:    0
   40:   91
   20:  228
   15:  226
   10:   69
------------
Total:  614  Prefixes = 346  Total Score = 646,328

Club: VK Contest Club

Comments:

This was only my second WPX SSB contest and after my first year score of only
48312 points, I am really happy with this year’s effort. I know my score
isn’t earth shattering, but at least I improved a lot from last year’s
station set up. I hope with more antenna improvements, especially on 40m and
10m, that I might go a lot better next year. 

The low lights of the event:

•	Non-existent propagation to Europe on 20m on the short path on the second
evening – this path is normally reliable for me and a real winner. The night
before was pretty good.
•	Poor propagation from here to USA on 20m. Only made 13 Q’s long path in
the morning and 15 Q’s short path in the early afternoon.
•	Poor propagation from here to Europe on 15m – that was a big surprise.
•	Average propagation from here to North America on 15m on the second and
third morning
•	Only being able to make a handful of QSOs into Europe both mornings on 40m


The highlights of the event:

•Great propagation from here to North America on 15m on the first morning
•Nice runs into Asia on 15m in between search and pouncing for North America
•Spectacular long path signals from Europe on 20m on the second afternoon
that ran very very late into the early evening.
•Great little run on 10m into JA with lots of new multipliers
•Exciting to see 10m open up to Europe on the second evening where I had
could have a brief run for 30 minutes and make 20 Q’s. During which time I
was called by a station in Benin – amazing!!

I really did have a great time during this event. With low power, I spent
probably 85% of my time search and pouncing. I managed to operate the whole 36
hours. I did start losing motivation and get really tired on the Sunday morning
around 0100 UTC. At that time the band closed to North America early on 15m, I
couldn’t get any runs into Asia/Pacific on 20m or 15m and so in desperation I
checked out 10m. There were only two JA’s on the band, so I gave a few CQ’s
and then spent the next hour working 42 stations in Asia. For most of the
contest I could keep a rate of 20 QSO’s per hour going. This only dropped off
to 17/hour on the Sunday evening when I had no propagation to Europe on 20m
short path and I couldn’t find any new North Americans on 40m. I’m kicking
myself I didn’t visit 10m an hour earlier on the Sunday night, I reckon I
might have had a lot more Europeans in the log. Just goes to show I need to
check 10m a lot more. But I’m glad for the 20 Europeans I grabbed in my 30
minutes of fun there. 

Anyway, with these big contests I learn more about techniques, improving my
operation style and understanding how to improve my score. So it’s just a
matter of improving my antenna’s before my next big international contest,
which will probably be the IARU World Championships in July.

I tried to give VK8 to as many people as possible. After 614 Q's in 2010, I
hope to give out VK8 to over 1000 Q's next year!!


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