[3830] ARRLDX SSB N8II SOAB LP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, SSB

Call: N8II
Operator(s): N8II
Station: N8II

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    5     5
   80:   33    22
   40:   79    39
   20:  515    88
   15:  465    85
   10: 1034    92
-------------------
Total: 2139   330  Total Score = 2,116,483

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

It's a good day for a contest write up, 4-5 inches of new powdery snow and it
was 15 F or colder mid morning. What a topsy turvy weekend, full of the
unexpected and keeping you on your toes. The traditional strategies needed some
adaption to survive the weekend with a good score. The planets misaligned enough
for me Friday that it turned into a very busy day with things that could not
have been done sooner, so I started less than well rested with no hope of a
serious all out effort. It was a contest for contester fun weekend for me.

The effects of the Friday major flare were still present as the test began.
Starting on 15, it was wide open to South America with some Caribbean thrown in
for good measure, no big surprise, but 10 was equally as good to SA with still
loud signals at 01Z as well as loud Hawaiians. JA's were very weak on 15 at the
start and actually a few big gun JA's on 10 had good signals around 01Z, quite
late for here. 15 was still very weak to JA at 01Z, but a Chinese station was
loud and easily worked. KL7 and KH6 were both loud. It was down to 20 at 0130Z,
probably not soon enough to find booming stations to the south, but only the
EA's and north AF were loud with very little Asia. A check of 15 at 0255 found
now fairly loud workable JA's there, again much later than normal for this time
of year. All weekend long, I made little or no attempt to run JA's with none
worked in the run mode, instead trying to get a few Asian mults, results
however, were not good. By 0320Z, 20 was improving to north EU and Asia,
logging  many Russians, KL7, and OH + OH0. Turkey was also logged with a good
signal. The first night I QRT'ed early with no low band QSO's in the log.
Saturday, I was up too late to be serious, but still feeling very sleepy. 10
was open well to western EU with a good run rate at 12Z, but Scandinavia did
not appear until 1220 and first northern (above 6 area) Russian not logged
until 1308. A6 and A7 called in, not much else really rare. I stuck with 10
running good rates until moving to 15 at 1545 and luckily found a spot clear
enough to run well down there; the majority of the activity was still on ten. I
went back and forth between 10 and 15 with the 10M run ending about 1820Z with
still many loud western EU on the band, but I looked mainly south for some
mults. After a refreshing hour and 40 minute break (lunch and dog walk), I
turned on the radio at 2015 and right where the VFO was sitting was amazingly
quiet where I stared a nice high rate EU run until 2145, what luck! Returning
to 15 at 22Z after sweeping 20, it was open well to the south but almost dead
to JA. 10, however was open pretty well to JA at 2235 as well as wide open to
the south until 0010Z. Turning to 40, there was not the usual sea of QRM with
actually poor EU activity. Stations who were there were actually easy to work.
75 was even worse activity wise, but open to EU. Later in the evening activity
picked up on both bands. At 01Z which is 2 hours past our sunset, 15 was decent
to JA and still wide open to the south. Then a check of 20 at 0130 found many
loud EU still running on the band, incredible! They were across the
Mediterranean and northern EU mainly. Of particular note was the large amount
of EA6 activity thru the weekend working them on 80 thru 10. Dutch activity is
always amazingly high for a small country with many 25 W stations logged.

Sunday can best be described as a struggle with best rates of the day early on
10 and late afternoon on 20 which again surprised me. I started low in the band
on 10 running exactly 3 KHz below K3ZO who I knew would keep the lower side
clear of QRM. But both of us ran out of callers way before we had hoped. 10
meter activity stretched from below 28300 up to well above 28800 with
essentially no clear unused frequencies until above 28800! The EU stations were
having a run fest at the expense of USA runners. I tried 15 and ran about 40
stations including two from YB mid morning until that dried up. S&P on 10
was a dupe fest finding many of the same stations who had called me the day
before, but I kept plugging along finding a few good mults along the way. 10
was wide open from the west coast to EU and eventually the opening favored them
as the band was closing for us. 15 was a sea of runners from 1830 until quite
late with enormous signals and 20 was the same until 23Z. Stations on top of
each other on 20 were making S&P painful with a noticeable nearly unused
clear area either side of 14250. Running there proved fruitless. Fatigue lead
to an error at the end as we had a very good JA/Asian opening in the last 90
minutes which I mostly missed. 9M6XRO was loud post contest, but not workable
with LP and China was heard as well.

Ukrainian activity seemed near normal despite the happenings there which was
nice to see. Many thanks to all of the callers and spotters. Running big pile
ups was not as common as on CW and there seemed to be plenty of WV activity
with K3ZJ and NW8U heard often as well as some others. We probably will not
experience an ARRL DX contest with solar flux in the 160's/170's for some time
to come, so it was fun to experience and not miss the great conditions on 20,15
and 10. CW contesting is the more civil mode. It's nothing new, but the EU
domination/obliteration of the bands made searching for multipliers tough for
more hours than usual with 15 being open until late afternoon and 20 almost
around the clock. There may be some high band records which fall; activity was
certainly impressive from EU and the south.

73, Jeff


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