[3830] ARRLDX SSB K2AX M/2 HP

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                    ARRL DX Contest, SSB - 2022

Call: K2AX
Operator(s): NY3B KE2D
Station: K2AX

Class: M/2 HP
QTH: New Jersey
Operating Time (hrs): 37:42

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   28    22
   80:  131    50
   40:  243    71
   20: 1221   111
   15:  866   111
   10:  265    64
-------------------
Total: 2754   429  Total Score = 3,536,676

Club: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

Conditions were better than last year but not as good as we had hoped.  The SFI
of 120 on Saturday night and all Sunday was encouraging but it brought a K index
of 27 with it and this made things rough on the lower 3 bands.  We actually did
better on those bands last year than we did this year in both total QSOs as well
as multipliers.

However, the upper 3 bands definitely made up the difference, especially 15m. 
While it was not quite spectacular, 15m was far better than 2021 when we made
only 180 total QSOs.  Of course 20m continues to be the money band for us.  We
had solid runs on both 20m and 15m on both days for several continuous hours. 
10m has yet to become the gold mine we’re hoping it will but we were happy to
see a large jump in activity there vs last year.  In 2021 we had only 23 QSOs
and 6 mults on 10 m.  This year our numbers on 10m improved by more than 10X. 
We did manage to more than double our score from 2021 (which was nothing to be
excited over) but did not make the 4 million points were dreamed about.  Maybe
we’ll get there over the next few years.

I’m always surprised by the number of QRP stations that are on.  While the
majority of them are a real challenge to pull out, some of them have surprising
signals.  I also don’t remember working as many British 2E0 stations in the
past as we did this year.  A few of them had surprisingly good signals using
only the 50 watts they are permitted.  This seemed especially true on Sunday on
15m where they were as loud as any 100w station in Europe and better than some
KW stations.   Speaking of stations from England, I noticed that there we worked
considerably more G/M/2E0 stations this year than last year.  Not just because
conditions were better, they were also a larger fraction of our total QSOs than
they were last year.  I can see this represented in the statistical graphs that
N1MM provides under Statistics in the View menu so it is not just my
imagination.

While I was looking at the statistics, I noticed that in the phone contest
stations from Italy are dominant while in CW it was stations from Germany that
take the lead.  Germany is second in phone but the Italians have a clear lead. 
I can see that last year essentially all of our 15m QSOs came from South
America, Central America, and the Caribbean with PY, CE, LU, KP4, and YV
accounting for 90%+.  This year with 15m opening to Europe for substantial
periods on both days it was an entirely different story.  We even worked enough
JA stations on 15m to be noticeable in the graph.  I thought it was an
interesting coincidence that we worked the same number of mults on 20m and 15m. 
While 10m was never really runnable to Europe, Steve did manage to work a number
of EU stations on Saturday via skew path while he had the 10m antennas pointed
to 170 while working South America.  This helped with the mult count on 10m. 
This year we worked a total of 17 stations on 6 bands and an additional 31 on 5
bands.

We’re also happy that nothing broke or malfunctioned and that we had
relatively pleasant weather.  I recall a few recent years where we had late
winter snow storms during this contest which really made for challenging
operating.  We did have some very brief rain come through on Sunday which
created some rain static that made it rough for a little bit.  One highlight of
the weekend was when NY3B worked OL5G where 7 year old Laura was the op at the
mic.

Thanks as always to Mark, K2AX for the use of his great station and also to his
wife Donna, W2DOB and their family for their patience and hospitality.

73,
KE2D for NY3B & KE2D


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