[3830] CQWW SSB KQ2M SOAB HP
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webform at b41h.net
Sun Nov 20 13:13:02 PST 2011
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 10.0
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160:
80:
40:
20: 410 26 75
15: 537 22 67
10: 924 19 67
------------------------------
Total: 1871 67 209 Total Score = 1,510,548
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
There was a lot of damage in Western CT after Hurricane Irene in late August, so
I was not prepared to do a major single op effort. My health has been erratic
as well, adding to the uncertainty. However, even with a promised October
snowstorm! on the way, I was not going to miss this weekend.
With major issues on 20 and 15 and no low band antennas, my strategy was to see
how the first hour was on 20 then go to sleep and get up early.
At 5 AM, the National Weather Service upped their forecast to 8"-14" inches of
snow for Newtown,CT I have lived here for 18 years and NEVER saw snow in
October; but now they were predicting a major snowstorm! CQWW Phone has
traditionally been a MAGNET for violent Nor'easters over the past 30 years, so
I wasn't complete surprised. However, with 80+% of the leaves still on the
trees, this amount of wet snow would be diasterous; actually causing worse
damage than Hurricane Irene did.
I started on 15 @ 1030z and most of EU cq'ed in my face. Found a decent freq.
and at 1054z, with a few flecks of light in the sky, the band EXPLODED!
Absolutely astonishing rate that did NOT let up! The last 10 rate quickly
soared into the 350+ range, then moved into the 400+ range and continued to
climb!
At 1119z, Marko, ZD8O called in - Marko ON5ZO, was the referee of my WRTC team
(with W7WA) in WRTC 2002 in Finland. At 1129 RV9WB called in with RA9FEL at
1131z (Z17). EX8ML followed at 1142 and RV9UP in z18 @ 1145z. The 11z was
251! At 1207z UN9PQ called followed by HS0ZEE at 1209z and YB0COX @ 1217z,
VK6GR @ 1229z and YB1AQD @ 1257z. At 1224z the last 10 rate was 450.0! and at
1233z, the last 100 rate was 315.2!! The 12z hour was 208! Only once before
did I have back to back 200+ hours in a SSB Dx contest from stateside, but
hings were only just warming up!
The 13z hour got rolling with TF3CY @ 1304z, A61EE @ 1305z and VU3DJQ @ 1306z!
WOW! CN8VO followed @ 1309z, with YE2R @ 1312z and YC2FAJ @ 1314z
I couldn't believe the volume of callers and how fast I was able to work them.
At 1325z I qsy'ed to 10, found a good spot and all hell broke loose! 5Z4EE
called in @ 1326z - barely audible in the din of EU callers. R9WS and RV9WP
(z17) followed at 1330z and 1332z Now the rate really soared to numbers that I
could only imagine: I was working 6-7 per minute consistently, with 1351z and
1352z back-to-back 7 qso minutes! Again, a first for me from stateside. At
1352z the last 10 rate was 529.4!! and the last 100 rate was 316.9!! The
spectacular 13z hour was 274!
14z continued the tremendous rate with A65EE calling in @ 1423z and HZ1PS @
1435z. At 1439z the snow started. The temp was about 33 degrees but the snow
was so thick and fast, that there was no time to melt. It started to
accumulate immediately and the snow static became a small roar. Fortunately
the EU signals were still loud, but it was getting progressively harder to pull
them out from the relentless roar of the snow static as it built to well over
S9. 14z ended as a 235 hour, making it the first time that I have ever had 4
straight 200+ hours from stateside!
Not to be outdone, the snowstorm rapidly turned into a blizzard with 3"+ per
hour snowfall rates and wind gusts into the 30 mph range. 10 meters continued
to crank in the 15z hour with ZA1E and CN8VO both calling in at 1525z, and
ZS2NF, GZ5Y and 5N7M calling in @ 1548-9z. 15z ended as a 164 hour, as the
snow static got louder, the power blips were becoming more common, often
tripping the breaker on the amp. causing me to run barefoot for a few minutes.
The NWS continued to upgrade the forecast, now predicting 10" - 15" inches of
snow, and on weather radar, some very intense yellow/brown (4"+ per hour) snow
bands were setting up over my qth. The end of the contest was now inevitable,
the only question was when?
16z continued the great rates but it was getting more and more difficult to
copy anything. IG9/I2ADN called in @ 1633z followed by Robert, ST2AR @ 1637z
and GT8IOM at 1651z. 16z ended with a 159 hour, which felt very slow compared
to earlier in the morning. 10 was fading but with such heavy snow static I
knew that 15 would be useless. Nothing to do but ride 10 until there was
nothing left.
The snow reintensified at 17z with more yellow bands on the radar. Visibility
was under 50' without the wind, and on wind gusts approached whiteout
conditions. It was January in October, and fully leaved branches and trees
started to snap from the weight of the heavy snow, now frozen as the temp.
dropped into the 20's at 1 PM!
17z started with the EU stations getting weaker and more and more often buried
beneath the snow static. I tried different combos of antennas, changing
antenna headings, and every conceivable combination of filtering with and
without the Notch, AF gain and IPO on my FT1000MP, to little avail. at 1722z,
Al1G called in at his sunrise! Something I have only seen with top of the
cycle conditions. 5H3EE called in @ 1737z and at 1753z I lost the amp for the
4th time. I couldn't copy on 10 anymore but had a 162 hour even though I
operated only 53 miinutes! I left 10 with 924 q's in 4.6 hours for a rate of
200/hr!!! Truly incredible!
Ordinarily I would expect to run on 15, but 15 was utterly useless. With a
full-scale blizzard raging outside!, the snow static on 15 was s9+20 regardless
of anything that I tried. Nothing to do but go to 20. I found a good freq.
between 2 M/M stations and let it rip. Lots of 6 minutes followed as the power
blips got angrier and became more numerous. The radar was all Yellow over my
qth and the snow continued it's record pace - determined to outdo the qso rates
that I was experiencing. Although the snow static was ferocious on 20 (but
better than the deafening roar on 15), the EU Multi's were super loud and I
able to pick them out. The 18z hour was 206 and VK3CTN longpath called in @
1841z. 19z started with SX5P calling in @ 1905z, followed by ZM4M at 1915.
GD3YUM followed at 1928 and 3V8SS was worked at 1939z. I kept losing the amp.
and at 1949z I lost power. I worked the last few stations with no amp, no
power, no lights and the FT1000MP barefoot on an uninterruptible power supply.
I said KQ2M qrt and shut the radio off.
I went upstairs and it was quite dark even though it was only 3:49 PM. There
was 9" of snow on the ground and the temperature had fallen to 20 degrees! I
know that there are areas of the country where this type of storm might only be
a minor "event" on October 29th, but here in Western CT, an October blizzard, is
a truly "off-the-scale" event and from what I have heard, it was the first ever
recorded!
Broken trees were already blocking my driveway and now the power and cable
lines had just been ripped from the side of my house by falling trees.
During the night, the storm raged and about 1 AM, with more than a foot of snow
on the ground, one extremely large tree starting leaning dangerously toward our
house. I woke my xyl and daughter and we moved to the downstairs just in case
the big tree snapped and hit our house. Fortunately it didn't and early the
next morning, I went out and chainsawed 15 trees out of my driveway so that I
could get the snowplow in. There was no heat, electricity, cable or cell
phones. We were totally cut off. Later I found out that Newtown,CT had more
than 170 power lines down with more than 2/3 of our roads impassable. It took 5
full days before EMS could finally reach all the homes and up to 12 days for
some streets to get their power back. The power grid, cable and communications
of this part of Connecticut was almost totally destroyed and took two weeks to
rebuild (they are still rebuilding it even now) with the help of crews from 23
different states! I did not have cable/internet/email for 2 full weeks, and
before the power could be restored, it took a crew from Michigan to clear the
road of the trees and Central Maine power, who restored my electric, had to cut
down an additional 15 trees on my property. As expected, the local utilities,
CL & P (Northeast Utilities), ATT and Charter communications, learned NOTHING
from the damaged that Hurricane Irene had caused exactly two months before, so
they were even more unprepared for the extreme devastation that this epic storm
caused. I will try to post some pictures on my website www.kq2m.com in the next
few weeks.
Back to the contest, it was truly incredible to experience 200+ hour rates for
the 9 hours that I operated on Saturday morning/afternoon. I can only imagine
what I would have been able to do with a full working station, the incredible
conditions and activity and without the vicious weather. I had never seen rates
like this from stateside in 35+ years of operating contests!
I thank all the stations for the q's and all the DX stations and Dxpeditions
for the wonderful mults! What a blast, even though it was cut quite short by
an equally unbelievable blizzard that dropped 20" of snow on my hill!
Unfortunately my antennas/rotators did sustain damage from the heavy wet snow
that iced up and then "grew" in size as the additional wet snow stuck to it,
mushrooming the size and weight of the accumulations. I will be on but not
seriously. Too much antenna work to do and too much of other "real-life" to
catch up as well.
Here are some memorable numbers from the contest:
Best hour 281 !! New all-time best hour from me from stateside
Best 10 min rate was 57 ! from 1218z-1227z
best 30 min rate was 152 ! from 1331z-1400z
Best 60 min rate was 281 ! from 1327z-1426z
Best 120 min rate was 523 ! from 1326z-1525z
Best last 10 rate 529.4 ! and Best last 100 rate 316.9 !
Q's per minute:
1 8 min !!! 1st ever from stateside
7 7 min !! Only 1 previous ever from stateside
43 6 min ! Usually only 1 or 2 max. per contest
85 5 min
118 4 min
136 3 min
100 2 min
Retes by band:
10 4.6 @ 201/hr!
15 3.1 @ 175/hr
20 2.4 @ 174/hr (includes 1 hour of s & p on Friday)
BREAKDOWN QSO/mults KQ2M CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST Single Operator
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 HR TOT CUM TOT
0 ..... ..... ..... ..... 3/6 ..... 3/6 3/6
1 . . . 50/55 . . 50/55 53/61
2 . . . . . . . 53/61
3 . . . . . . . 53/61
4 . . . . . . . 53/61
5 . . . . . . . 53/61
6 . . . . . . . 53/61
7 . . . . . . . 53/61
8 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 53/61
9 . . . . 6/8 . 6/8 59/69
10 . . . . 104/40 . 104/40 163/109
11 . . . . 251/23 . 251/23 414/132
12 . . . . 173/12 35/25 208/37 622/169
13 . . . . . 274/23 274/23 896/192
14 . . . . . 235/14 235/14 1131/206
15 . . . . . 164/11 164/11 1295/217
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 159/12 159/12 1454/229
17 . . . 105/32 . 57/1 162/33 1616/262
18 . . . 206/12 . . 206/12 1822/274
19 . . . 49/2 . . 49/2 1871/276
Thanks for an incredibly memorable contest!
See you in CQWWCW! and Happy Thanksgiving!
73
Bob KQ2M
kq2m at kq2m.com
www.kq2m.com
www.rlsfinancialgroup.com
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