[3830] CQ160 CW AA1K Single Op HP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2022

Call: AA1K
Operator(s): AA1K
Station: AA1K

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: DE
Operating Time (hrs): 29:55
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 1365  State/Prov = 59  Countries = 58  Total Score = 638,001

Club: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

It takes a lot of wire for Top Band.

As I sat with the CQ running in the slow hours Sunday morning, I pondered how
much wire was used in my antennas. There are 20 single or phased Beverages, with
a total of 30 Beverage wires, strung across our 17.5 acre property. They range
from 450 to 1500 feet long and total about 23,000 feet of wire. Some additional
wire is used in several short vertical arrays, hung from trees. Then there are
the radials, 120 under each of the five main elements in the K3LR transmitting
array, each radial about 130 feet long, and similar numbers under the four
elements in the broadside/endfire TX array (one element is switched between the
two arrays. About 100,000 feet plus.

Some of this wire I've been carrying around since the early 1980s. Most
obtainedfrom salvage yards in Wilmington, DE, from flea markets, the dumpster at
the local cable company and other places, some unwound from old transformers.
Never bought new. The first Beverage went up shortly after we moved here in
December 1997. The first tower went up in spring of 1998 (the driven element for
the K3LR array) and the radial laying began. It didn't stop till our first
snowfall that December. About 10 years later more radials followed when I
calculated I could fit in a broadside/endfire transmit array with more gain than
the K3LR. Details on all this at www.aa1k.us.

This weekend the contest began as a major snowfall hit the region. By sunrise
Saturday we had more than 8 inches on the ground. In contests I usually open two
windows in the small hamshack to keep the heat down but at one point during the
night the snow started blowing in and I had to close them.

I decided to start the operation high in the band to try and maximize 10-point
QSOs with Europe. In the early hours of the contest, it's tough to work Europe
low in the band since so many are working each other rather than chasing DX. I
landed on 1877 kHz and stayed there till 0734z, finally moving down around 1821
through sunrise. 

We had 239 ten-pointers in the log by sunrise, almost all from Europe. 4X2M
called in for our only Asia. KH7A was the only Pacific DX the first night. No
VK, ZL or JA heard. We had worked all states except KL7. Thanks K0IDX for
keeping ND on the map.

The snowstorm brought us lots of QRN, with the need for many repeats even though
most European signals were LOUD from about 03z through 08z.

Our first hour rate barely broke 100, down about 50 from last year's first hour.
Maybe the price for being high in the band. Or maybe it was just conditions.

We have three main Beverage sets for Europe. A single-wire, 950-footer. A set of
four 560-foot wires in broadside/endfire configuration, and a stagger-phased
pair of 1500-footers. The last, installed just before the contest a year ago,
seemed to be the most effective again this year. The 4-element broadside/endfire
short vertical arrays didn't seem as effective this year. 

We finished a new pair of short RX verticals for Europe on Thursday afternoon.
These were placed about 1300 feet from the transmit arrays and oriented so the
best null was in that direction. They are 33-foot untuned aluminum elements
spaced 1/4 wave endfire and separate feedlines run to a DX Engineering NCC-1
phasing box in the shack. This gave enough of a null so we could tune the band
while transmitting (SO2R). We found many new stations and mults with this.

The second night of the contest began with a great hope for another good opening
to Europe. The band teased us with good signals even before our sunset. But we
have been teased like this before, and the rest of the night was a major
disappointment. Only 64 additional 10-pointers were logged, including KL7 and ZL
as sunrise approached Sunday. 
We took an hour break early Sunday to save some operating time for Sunday
afternoon, and one additional European was worked 10 minutes before the end of
the contest (about 25 minutes before our sunset). That gave us 304 ten-pointers
for the weekend.

In Canada we never heard LB, NT, NU, YT. The only DX mult we heard but couldn't
work was LU8DPM, who has local noise problems.

Congrats to perennial winner K3ZM, Peter, for another great score.

AA1K CQ160CW 1/28/2022  - Hour by Points Statistics

Day        Hr   2    5    10   Tot  Accum 
2022-01-28 22   87   12   2    101  101   
2022-01-28 23   56   4    2    62   163   
2022-01-29 00   60   10   8    78   241   
2022-01-29 01   63   6    22   91   332   
2022-01-29 02   56   6    19   81   413   
2022-01-29 03   49   3    44   96   509   
2022-01-29 04   48   6    39   93   602   
2022-01-29 05   26   4    46   76   678   
2022-01-29 06   24   6    36   66   744   
2022-01-29 07   21   3    17   41   785   
2022-01-29 08   23   4    3    30   815   
2022-01-29 09   26   2    1    29   844   
2022-01-29 10   35   5    0    40   884   
2022-01-29 11   31   5    0    36   920   
2022-01-29 12   25   2    0    27   947   
2022-01-29 22   4    0    7    11   958   
2022-01-29 23   49   2    12   63   1021  
2022-01-30 00   46   3    9    58   1079  
2022-01-30 01   38   3    3    44   1123  
2022-01-30 02   45   2    5    52   1175  
2022-01-30 03   33   2    12   47   1222  
2022-01-30 04   33   1    5    39   1261  
2022-01-30 05   18   2    7    27   1288  
2022-01-30 06   7    0    0    7    1295  
2022-01-30 07   7    0    3    10   1305  
2022-01-30 08   8    1    0    9    1314  
2022-01-30 09   2    1    0    3    1317  
2022-01-30 10   6    1    1    8    1325  
2022-01-30 11   11   1    0    12   1337  
2022-01-30 12   10   0    0    10   1347  
2022-01-30 20   7    0    0    7    1354  
2022-01-30 21   10   0    1    11   1365  
Total 0    964  97   304  1365 1365


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