[3830] WPX SSB WW2DX(@W1/JONESPORT) M/M HP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB - 2020

Call: WW2DX
Operator(s): K1LZ W2RE K3JO W1ADI WW1X AA4LS W4IPC KM4SII W4FS WW2DX
Station: W1/JONESPORT

Class: M/M HP
QTH: Maine
Operating Time (hrs): 48
Remote Operation

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:  263
   80: 1028
   40: 2468
   20: 2967
   15:  755
   10:  153
------------
Total: 7634  Prefixes = 1521  Total Score = 32,026,176

Club: 

Comments:

First and foremost, we would like to express our thoughts and prayers to the
hard hit regions of the world that are in crisis. 
The ability to be home in isolation and still communicate with friends all over
the world truly shows how fortunate we are as a radio community.

This weekend was no exception.


Congratulations to the fantastic efforts by the M/M, M/2 and M/S teams that used
ingenuity to overcome the social distancing restrictions. I think this contest
weekend we will look back as a turning point on how M/* contesting changed.


The game plan.

Seven days prior to the contest we started to think about getting something
together for WPXSSB. We recently brought on a number of  new youths to the RHR
system who were very interested in contesting. The team started to brainstorm
about “what are the minimum requirements to operate a full M/M 100% remote?”
 After a whirlwind of discussion a game plan was in place. What transpired over
the following week was honestly quite remarkable. Over the next seven days a
plethora of work was done to accommodate a ten man remote team to operate a
contest station located on the coast of Maine. To put this into context, 10
operators, spread across the U.S and EU sitting in their homes in front of a
“glass cockpit” using nothing but a web browser and a USB headset to operate
full M/M station where the closest operator was 1000km away. No radio, no
hardware, no traveling  and no external logger.


The planets align.

Initially we had thought about using N1MM and setup the “WAN” connections
between everyone. This was a show stopper as a number of younger operators did
not have easy access to their network devices. We also thought about VPN but
again, time and resources were not an option.

We decided to write our own solution. We already had a basic “DX” logger in
our web interface but we needed some additional features for a contest
environment. 

1. Incrementing Serial (per band)
2. Super Check Partial
3. Mult recognition in callsign entry window
4. Digital voice recorder
5. Single shared log
6. Dupe check
7. Band breakdown
8. Score
9. Available Mults

O, and one other thing, what every M/* should have, a mult bell.


The real magic of this goes to Rock WW1X who once again, software engineered a
beautiful and elegant solution in a number of days. Late nights, iced fingertips
and gallons of caffeine made this happen!

If you are interested, here is a screenshot showing what the operator sees. 

https://share.getcloudapp.com/6quB4Ozr

Pre game plan.

As we started to see this magic unfold we quickly realized we could really pull
this off. We had a number of youth operators who wanted to experience contesting
in a mult-op environment. 

Youths:

AA4LS   (NC)  - 13 years old,  has been competing (and winning) in SO2R
CWT’s.
KM4SII  (NC)  - 17 years old,  Operated with PJ2T team also OP’d from TF and
TG4.
W4FS    (NC)  - 21 years old,  you can check out his QRZ page to see the long
list of achievements! 
W4IPC   (VA)  - 17 years old,  #2 US 4th call district slot for WPXSSB 2019 and
has presented at Hamvention on contesting.

OM’s:

K1LZ (MA)
K3JO (MA)
W1ADI (Slovenia)
W2RE (NY)
WW1X (CT)
WW2DX (NY)

We created a simple Google sheet and laid out each operator, band, time slots so
everyone knew when and where they were going to operate.  We also used #Slack
and created a channel for the team to stay connected over the weekend and this
ended up being half the fun! 

Game time.

So keep in mind none of us operated like this before, completely new experience,
new software and new horizons. Would we hit a bug halfway through, hit an edge
case we missed, lose power or internet at the site? Amazingly 48 hours later we
ended up with a new claimed M/M record, we will have to keep our fingers crossed
after log checking. I have to admit that I am still shaking my head and trying
to comprehend how awesome the experience was. The days of trying to “wire
up” everything before the contest just ended. Everything in one place,
efficient, simple, clean and most of all fun! Having the team in the slack
channel was also a fantastic experience, the kids were excited and chatting back
and forth the entire weekend. We had another feature that was bliss, the mult
bell. Every time a mult was logged every operator logged in would get a
traditional “Ding” from the mult bell! As soon as this happened the slack
channel would explode with thumbs up and cheers :-) 

The bands sounded great. We had good prop all weekend. We would check 10m
periodically and never hear a thing, even checked the ol’ faithful beacon
(FT8) and didn’t see anything there either! I guess the band is really dead.
On Sunday the 8/9’s on 15m were exceptionally loud and sounded like Es and
sure enough as we started passing Q’s from 15 to 10m it was open. W2RE racked
up over 150 q’s with SA and CAR on 10m! 


Thanks.

I wanted to personally thank the team for really doing a tremendous job this
weekend, specifically  K1LZ,  K3JO, W1ADI and W2RE staying focused and being
completely open to trying something so bleeding edge. Awesome having seasoned
pro operators sharing and mentoring these young contesters. It was truly a cool
thing to be a part of. Big shout out to Charles, Mason, Tucker and Connor, total
pleasure having you guys on the team, you proved yourselves as being first class
operators. I look forward to seeing what you guys do in the future. Last but not
least to Rock for really knocking it out of the park prior to the test and
performing some exceptional engineering skills. 


Final thoughts.

The world is experiencing something on a whole new level. Is this the beginning
of things to come? Clearly a wake up call and we will see many changes once
things come back around. I think it’s clear that MM contesting in general is
also going to see big changes moving forward. I am looking forward to that.

Missed opportunity.

The contest community missed out on a monumental opportunity this weekend.
Streaming. When the world is home with a lot of time on their hands and all on
the internet, this would have been an epic opportunity to showcase the magic and
excitement of radio sport contesting. One of the items on our list was to
“live stream” this event to the world and show the real insight into what
makes this part of the hobby so captivating. Unfortunately, after consulting
with a number of committees we simply could not get a solid answer out of what
would be allowed and what wouldn’t be so we simply bailed on the idea. With a
number of youth operators who are working hard at WRTC qualification we felt it
was too much of a chance to take.  I truly hope that the community will wake up
and see the overwhelming positive nature of this type of promotion. This is high
impact and we should be leveraging this technology as much as possible. 

A truly missed opportunity. 

See you in the next one!

73 Lee 
WW2DX


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