[3830] WPX SSB VA7BEC SO(A)AB LP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: VA7BEC
Operator(s): VA7BEC
Station: VA7BEC

Class: SO(A)AB LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 32

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    2
   80:   31
   40:  112
   20:  348
   15:  303
   10:   73
------------
Total:  869  Prefixes = 509  Total Score = 1,154,921

Club: Orca DX and Contest Club

Comments:

Immediately after a weekend marathon, my thoughts on the contest just ended are
undoubtedly influenced by how tired I am. A few days later, when I've had time
to look at my log and my notes and recall certain happy moments, my perspective
often changes. I'm sure it will be the same for WPX SSB 2012.

Right now, all I remember is how incredibly slow and frustrating this contest
was. In the end, my score is OK but the process of getting there was not really
so much fun. Well, not as much fun as I was hoping for. 

10m was disappointing. 15m and 20m started out fine except that all of a sudden
on Sunday morning the noise level hit S-9 and stayed that way until the end of
the contest. 40m, 80m and 160m were poor. I had hoped that the anyone-anywhere
aspect of WPX would at least let me catch more Canadian and stateside stations
but for whatever reason -- conditions, few stations listening for west coast,
out there but I couldn't hear them... -- not many Qs on the low bands. 

20m was open way into the night. 15m quite late as well. Great! Or so I
thought. Wasn't really of much use. I got the feeling that even when EU was
open from this QTH, EU was workiing EU with some east coast NA thrown in for
good measure. It can be lonely on the west coast...

Along with S-9 noise and poor propagation... splatter. Just incredible. And
some stations made the situation even worse with awful audio. I know EU
stations have to deal with incredible QRM, but this weekend it seemed like the
big stations upped the QRM ante just to stake claim to a wider area. But
stations outside the EU also had signals wider than necessary. For me, this
made pinpointing the actual calling frequency incredibly tough. In addition, I
was often in the middle of a QSO with another station and either my exchange or
the other station's exchange were obliterated, which required far too many
back-and-forth confirmations to maintain a good rate. 

I also found many stations just started calling CQ without asking if the
frequency was in use or simply just listening to find out. Or a station would
get hemmed in by two stations with really wide signals. In both cases, QSOs in
progress were obliterated and the apparently weaker station had to move.
Survival of the fittest? Kind sad if score is the only thing motivating us,
no?

For myself, I couldn't get a good run going on any band or in any direction.
Not even the usual NA pileups. Very disappointing. And I say this not
necessarily from a score perspective but from the fun of the quick pace and
working through the barrage of callsigns quickly and accurately. Many factors
came into play. The naturally occurring ones I can't do anything about. But the
station-induced ones... like someone dropping by to give me a Q and then moving
just a few clicks away to start pounding out an enormous signal and killing my
chances for a nice run. Not appreciated, not from my perspective. But then,
perhaps these stations didn't realize how loud they were???

Despite all my complaints, there were nice moments. Familiar callsigns. "Hi
Rebecca!". "Good luck" amid the frantic pace of (some) pileups. 

To everyone in my log, thank you! \(^o^)/
To everyone who had the patience to wait through the QRM, thank you. 
To everyone who took the time to get callsigns and/or exchanges right, thank
you. 

See you soon.

Rebecca VA7BEC


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