[3830] CQWW SSB KU2M SOSB/15 HP

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CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB

Call: KU2M
Operator(s): KU2M
Station: KU2M

Class: SOSB/15 HP
QTH: Wayne, NJ
Operating Time (hrs): 23.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:                    
   80:                    
   40:                    
   20:                    
   15:  759    27      102
   10:                    
------------------------------
Total:  759    27      102  Total Score = 234,264

Club: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

Horrible conditions. I really hate sounding like a complainer, but probably my
worst score in this category and without doubt the worst first nite in my
contesting experience...EVER. I had been hoping that the bands would have
recovered from the Coronal event that sent the A index soaring in combination
with extremely low sunspot numbers earlier in the week, but although conditions
recovered a bit, it wasn't enough. At the start of the contest Friday night, 15M
was a graveyard. I mean, NOTHING heard across the entire band... that had to be
a first. I wondered - is the antenna plugged in? Is my clock wrong? Did I have
a massive stroke? With nothing else to do, I started CQing. After a full hour
of that, I had worked exactly 3 stations... K3OO, KR2Q, and WE3P, for 2 mults
and zero points. At 9 PM I realized I was wasting my time (and my electric
bill) and quit.

Saturday and Sunday may have been the worst contest weekend I've ever heard in
terms of prop to Europe on 15M. The A index was sky high, and the sunspot
number was Death Valley low. I heard stations in South America and the
Caribbean running lots of Europeans, but for the most part I could not hear
them at all. I could hear some of the EU "big gun" stations with the
beam turned south, but it didn't matter... they couldn't hear me. Finally, I
was able to run a few EAs and Italians, but that was it. Southern Europe only.
Practically no northern Europeans could be heard, and those that were worked
were extremely weak and marginal. But however poor things were with regard to
Europe, they were even worse to Japan. In contrast to the days of yore when
there were JAs galore and you could run scads of them on 15M, and now and then
a UA0 or even a BY or two, there was not one JA heard the entire weekend!

All in all, not a good harbinger of things to come on the HF bands, namely 15M
and 10M, for years to come. I asked myself: will this make doing 15M monoband a
crazy idea? Well, it may be a lousy job, but somebody's got to do it!

Here's hoping that next year will be better!


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