[3830] ARRLDX SSB WP2AA(KK9A) SO Unlimited LP

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ARRL DX Contest, SSB

Call: WP2AA
Operator(s): KK9A
Station: NP2N

Class: SO Unlimited LP
QTH: Virgin Islands
Operating Time (hrs): 43

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   77    26
   80:  415    51
   40:  456    55
   20:  964    60
   15: 1284    57
   10: 1504    59
-------------------
Total: 4700   308  Total Score = 4,342,800

Club: 

Comments:

My wife and I made our second trip to St. Croix in March. It was a fantastic
vacation and we really enjoyed the people, beaches and restaurants. The seafood
and Caribbean chicken dishes were amazingly good and the tour of the Cruzan Rum
factory along with samples was exceptionally fun. I brought an Elecraft K3S in
my carry-on luggage and operated the contest from NP2N’s station.  I also
brought along an Elecraft KAT-500 tuner to automatically change antennas when
the K3S changes bands. This was great when moving multipliers or clicking on
cluster spots. The station antennas are very modest, just a small log periodic
and low band wires however they are located 300 foot high on the north side of
a mountain which helps. My wife and I had a pre-contest dinner with other local
and visiting hams and their XYLs, among the group were contesters K9VV/NP2X,
WP2B and N2TK operating as KP2M. We had a great time, the food was good and a
live band playing 70’s rock made for a fun evening. I came into the shack
about 15 minutes before the contest and 15m was full of loud stations from
Japan. I do not recall ever hearing so many loud JA’s from the Caribbean. I
called CQ running 100 watts but oddly had few responses from Asia or the US and
one minute into the contest I switched to 20m where I did generate a small
pileup. After a short time I went back to 15m and had a little success. I made
99 QSOs and then it got slow again so I switched back to 20m. This was all in
the first hour and only 177 stations made it into my log. The second hour on
20m was a little better, but I was still calling CQ often. The low bands were
reasonably quiet and I stayed up all night trying to work as many stations and
sections as possible on 40m, 80m and 160m. Often a QSY to 160m yielded no
contacts but occasionally it did pay off with a small run and a few
multipliers. I had many very slow daytime hours while everyone in the US was
beaming Europe. Conditions to Europe were good and they were apparently not
hearing my low power signal off the side of their beams. There were 6 other KP2
stations very active in this contest so I got little “Rare DX” signal boost.
It was great to see 10m open however I had spot light propagation to certain
areas at various times and mostly slow rates. Perhaps I spent too much time
here instead of 15m. I spent my last hour on 20m working 221 stations. I would
have liked more hours like this but unfortunately even with constant CQing I
had 20 hours with rates less than 100. Still, it was fun to be back in St Croix
operating the ARRL DX Phone contest and I hope to do it again soon. Thanks for
the QSOs, especially the 26 stations that worked me on all six bands. I wish to
thank NP2N for the use of his station and also my QSL manager WD9DZV for
submitting my logs to LoTW, E-QSL and Clublog as well as answering all bureau
and direct QSL requests.

73,
John KK9A
http://www.wp2aa.com


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