[3830] WPX SSB VE6TL SOAB HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: VE6TL
Operator(s): VE6TL
Station: VE6TL

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Calgary
Operating Time (hrs): 32

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:   18
   40:  172
   20:  553
   15:  582
   10:   51
------------
Total: 1376  Prefixes = 694  Total Score = 2,577,516

Club: 

Comments:

What a better way to spend a snowy weekend than doing a contest?  I was hoping
to go to VE6SV for a group effort but was suffering from a cold and with the
roads so icy, decided to stay home.  Was also told that SV couldn't make it
back in time due to being stuck out east in a snowstorm.  Guess things have a
way of working out.  

This was, by far, the best result of any contest I've ever done.  I put in more
hours, got more Q's and more points than any previous contest.  So I guess condx
were pretty good!  I've never made it to a million points before so this was
uncharted territory for me.  

I couldn't hear anything on 160m and 80 was almost a wipeout as I'm still
experiencing RFI from power lines at 30dB over S9.  The power company has been
hunting all winter for the source.  With all the frost on everything, this only
made the arcing much worse.  Luckily, my FTDX-5000MP has some great filtering
that helps me through a lot of it.  I'm finally getting the hang of it after
about a year.  

40m was pretty tough going, as usual but had a good run on Saturday night.  I
had a great run on 20m on Saturday afternoon and some good runs on 15m on
Sunday afternoon.  On Sunday, 20m was just wall to wall packed so it was hard
to do any running.  Even below 14.150 MHz it was full of DX signals.  I was
busy running Americans on 15m around 2000Z on Sunday when suddenly this noise
came on from the southeast that killed everything.  It sounded like a vacuum
cleaner.  I ended up point my beam towards Japan and got rid of most of the
noise.  And I started working JAs. I noticed the Aurora was acting up and this
got worse as the afternoon went on.  After a while, it didn't seem to matter
where I pointed my yagi.  Calls came in from all over.  I haven't checked but I
figure I made DXCC on 20 and 15m.  With about 45 minutes to go I was wondering
about Asia.  I had only worked a few JAs and one Indonesian station.  Then I
got a call from Malaysia and ZL.  The ZL said I was the first Canadian he had
worked!  Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  Although I'd like to strangle whoever
invented the phonetic alphabet.  About 70% of the time they heard "echo"
instead of "tango" for my call.  So when I said "Tokyo" instead of tango they
would say "bravo".  I thought the point was to avoid things that sounded alike.
 

Time to rest my sore throat.  I've gone through 3 packs of lozenges over the
weekend.

CU in the next one!

Jerry VE6TL

Rig:  FTDX-5000MP
Ant:  TH6DXX tribander @13m and BigIR Vertical 80-10m
Amp:  FL-7000 about 500W peak


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