[3830] CQWW SSB N9NB SOAB LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB - 2020

Call: N9NB
Operator(s): N9NB
Station: N9NB

Class: SOAB LP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 35
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   14     7        7
   80:   64    14       31
   40:  170    24       51
   20:  295    25       70
   15:  432    24       75
   10:  102    11       27
------------------------------
Total: 1077   105      261  Total Score = 1,076,406

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

During the contest, I kept wondering what one single word could describe this
outing on the international grid iron of the airways. The only word that
continued to pop up in my mind during the weekend was 'weird'. Other adjectives,
like "fun", "exciting", exhilarating" also apply, of
course, but the conditions this weekend caused me to scratch my head more than a
few times.

So many things were just plain bizarre, but that may have to do with my
relatively limited experience in contesting (I have only been a serious and
regular serial contestor for the past few years). Hence, I have not seriously
contested week in and week out during a sun-spot peak. Only during the dearth of
this cycle's sunspots, corresponding to the current WRTC qualifying season, have
I been seriously learning and studying the bands during the various contests. 
 
This past weekend, I was at the same time amazed at the wonderful conditions on
10 and 15, which reminded me how much more enjoyable those high bands are when
compared to cacophony of splatter on 20 and 40, yet was dumbfounded at how weak
I seemed to be during most of this contest. This contest is the first in which I
found myself thinking more than a few times that maybe I should redesign the
station for high power and invest in amplifiers. This event was exasperating, as
there were many pile ups where I had to call for 5 to 10 minutes to make it
through. Except for an hour on Sunday morning on 15 m, I was utterly unable to
successfully call CQ -- I would spend 10 minutes calling CQ and get 1 or 2
answers at best - it was futile, and reminded me of a comment that someone had
written in this forum a month or two ago, where they speculated that there may
be a heightened differential to output power - where the weak transmitters were
being unduly attenuated by the ionosphere compared to higher power stations. For
the first time ever, I felt like that might be happening. 

I was simply was too weak to attract any callers! I wound up working search and
pounce the entire weekend (except for the hour on Sunday sunrise where 15 m had
a terrific opening to EU and the middle east). The weird thing for me was that
when I was calling stations that I happened upon, I lost most of the jump balls
and typically waited for 2 or 3 others to complete their qso before getting my
shot to log the qso. Thus, I did a LOT of waiting and listening. In short, I
learned a lot of patience this weekend, and believe I improved my S and P skills
as a result - this weekend caused me to develop a discipline and method of
scanning the bands and using the antennas to help spatially multiplex the
universe of stations that I could listen to. I had to resign myself to the fact
that I would not be able to run at all, and instead I put my focus on listening
extra hard and scanning the bands very aggressively to try and hear any
multiplier I could find. I had not expected this to be the case this weekend, so
it was weird to find the conditions and situation, and eekend very fun, and
quite intense as I worked to listen to every single kHz on every band as
carefully as I could.

While the amazing ground slope at my QTH offers a huge HF propagation advantage
and often acts like a "free boost" in signal that can best an
amplifier, this was the first contest I can remember where I ever felt that
there was something at work in the ionosphere that really served to disadvantage
a LP station. I wonder if others experienced this.

One of the weird things, though, is that in some major pile ups to Africa, my
station did quite well and I was able to bust through with relative ease. It was
on the bread and butter EU and SA QSOs where I was unable to break through the
competition to reach get my S & P target. 

The other weird thing is that I worked and heard more YB stations on 40 m this
weekend than I ever heard in my life -- it was astounding to me how many loud
Indonesian stations there were on 40 (especially Sunday), yet I only heard a
couple of JA stations and no BY's on 40.

Another weird thing is that I experienced the late afternoon 15 m skew path EU
opening for the first time. I worked SJ2W and OH3Z around 4pm Sunday afternoon,
and had only heard about this in the past and had (and GH N2J and  the otAu Swas
Ptatrhough wmnd doin didthe ues


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