[3830] WPX CW N8II SOSB15 HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, CW

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

Class: SOSB15 HP
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): 23.8

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:     
   40:     
   20:     
   15: 1313
   10:     
------------
Total: 1313  Prefixes = 775  Total Score = 2,603,225

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

It was a good news bad news picture from here on several fronts. Solar flux
dropped below 100 which is bad, but the good news is conditions are affected
the least in the summer months by lower SFI. Geo mag activity seemed relatively
low over at least Sunday which was the better day. Good news was that the path
to East Asia was open morning and evening both days, but the bad news was weak
JA's all evening Saturday, our usual East Coast curse in many contests. I think
my Chinese QSO's may have actually been ahead of JA Q's late Saturday evening,
but I did put maybe 30 JA's in the log Sunday AM and evening. Saturday
afternoon after 18Z and early evening were pretty punk most of the time except
for a good EU run from 2103-2212Z after a break at 2017 when I had pretty well
worked out EU CQ'ers. 

Bad news was very little sporadic E except into FL early afternoon Sunday and
the skip zone was long preventing any strong signals from closer than CO for
most of the event. This is a death knell for winning the contest, too many USA
prefixes and QSO's unreachable. I did find the best USA backscatter Saturday
evening was beaming around 310-330 degrees as opposed to the usual 250-270
heading. I worked what I could hear or my prefix count would have been quite a
bit lower.

Bad new was that storms were predicted especially on Sunday. The good news was
that they held off until about 1915Z Sunday when things were slow. Static
crashes started being a problem around 1845 and persisted well after the rain
ended here. Also, after the rain my line noise level came up after being pretty
reasonable the rest of the weekend and never let up until past the contest end.

Bad news was the dog needed to be walked and the help (my daughter) was out of
town and the WX was predicted to be hot and humid both days, so I ended up
working K9DOG for no point credit both days around 16Z when EU was coming thru
well. It turns out we could have delayed it Saturday.

Saturday at 12Z 15 was only open to Eastern EU and as far as Central Asia, very
strange! By 1250Z or so, Western EU started to be heard well. Saturday afternoon
was trying; I was unable to run and even S50K who I worked around 0245Z long
path was weak. Most of the EU still workable were UA6/UR/LZ/HA/OK/OM and SW EU.
At 21Z Scandinavia and all of EU were back in again.

Good news was I have never worked nearly so many Chinese in one contest
including several prefixes never worked before. Chinese prefixes worked were
BA4, B4, BY5, BD8, BG3, B7, B9, BY1, BH4, BG8, BA7, BY8, BG9, BG6, BD1, and
BX4.
I think I heard XW1 each morning and evening, and also worked 9V1, 9V50, 9M6,
HS4, HS0, E21, YB2, YE1, YC1, YB0, JT5, and XV9. Obviously it was great
directly over the north pole especially from 24-02Z. Even when JA's were fairly
loud their activity seemed low as it seems every year in WPX CW. We has a good
JA opening Sunday morning, but I could just not justify the slower rate beaming
East Asia vs. EU. I did keep the antenna around 20-30 degrees for quite a while,
but JA is 330-340. Finally, in the last 15 minutes JA signals came up and I
started running them well mixed with W6/W7/VE7.

Signals from EU were booming in Sunday morning and I probably missed at one
good hour with a late start. You could definitely work even the weakest lowest
level EU's from 1200-1430Z. I ran on the same frequency low in the band from
1200Z-1545Z with mostly very good rates. Many thanks to all of the fb EU ops,
many working over 1000 Q's. The pile ups were never a problem for me like they
were in ARRL CW when I was absolutely buried by callers at times. I was really
impressed by the number of EU stations with over 200-300 QSO's, very few just
made a few Q's. Like most contests these days, this one was very Euro centric
and I am sure there were many EU to EU Q's to be made the whole 48 hours. I can
only imagine the activity on 20 during the EU mornings. I worked no stations in
Southern AF and few in OC besides Hawaii and ZL. Even SA seemed down
significantly from other major contests.

This may very well be the last hurrah for world wide openings on 15 during our
summer period for WPX CW in this cycle. I was surprised by the quality of the
East Asian openings bearing in mind the low SFI. Many thanks to all who called
and to all of those big guns making 2000 plus QSO's who made S&P fun too.

73, Jeff


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