[3830] WAE SSB VY2ZM M/S HP

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                    WAE DX Contest, SSB - 2020

Call: VY2ZM
Operator(s): VY2ZM VE9CB
Station: VY2ZM

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Prince Edward Island
Operating Time (hrs): 46

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  QTCs  Mults
-------------------------
   80:  426   426    39
   40:  389   389    41
   20: 1408  1408    50
   15:                 
   10:                 
-------------------------
Total: 2223  2223   379  Total Score = 1,685,034

Club: Maritime Contest Club

Comments:

A couple of weeks before the contest, Jeff invited me to join him for a Multi-op
effort.  I readily accepted and I throughly enjoyed the friendship and
hospitality of Jeff and his wonderful wife, Miriam VY2NA.

Conditions dictated that this contest was mostly one-band-at-a-time.  Conditions
also dictated that, for us, this contest ran exclusively on 80, 40 and 20
metres.  Over 60% of our QSOs were made on 20m, with the balance roughly evenly
divided between 40 and 80.  We made not one contact on 15 or 10 metres.  We did
hear a very weak DK2OY on 15m calling and working a Brazilian station, and we
heard several South American stations on that band running Europeans that we
could not hear.  We heard a few unreadable signals on 15m that we thought were
Europeans, but we saw no evidence of any real opening to Europe.  As for ten
metres - it was a graveyard.

So, this contest was all about running, running and more running, with
occasional multiplier passing to the next band up or down.

Jeff's excellent antenna farm really showed its effectiveness in these poor
conditions.  His stacked yagis on twenty metres really delivered and we were
able dig some very weak European signals out all day long until the MUF dropped.
 

Forty metres showed great promise,  but the openings did not last as long as we
expected.  We made the move to 40m a little too late on the first day, but we
corrected ourselves on the second, taking full advantage of Jeff's superb
antennas, seaside location and being about 800 km closer to Europe than the
nearest US stations.  

Eighty metres was excellent from well before local sunset until the casual
European ops went to bed.  We worked the most serious ops quite early each
evening, after which it was the hard work of eliciting calls from the tuners-by.
 

We suffered no power failures, equipment failures, or operator failures.  Jeff
and I worked smoothly as a team, passing multipliers between the run and mult
stations, and spelling each other off as needed.  

One small triumph was reporting back every single QSO we made during the
contest.  We sent QTCs whenever we were asked, and we asked frequently when our
store of unreported QSOs got too high for comfort.  At least one game soul had
never received QTCs before, and had to be coached through the process.  Another
explained that he was trying to write down our QTCs from the discomfort of his
car! 

For all the challenge of the conditions, Jeff and I feel very happy with our
score. 

- Dave VE9CB


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