[3830] CQWW SSB K4ZW SOAB HP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB - 2022

Call: K4ZW
Operator(s): K4ZW
Station: K4ZW

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 45
OpMode: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:   32    10       21
   80:  219    16       56
   40:  311    25       75
   20:  880    30      103
   15: 1068    29      106
   10: 1219    24      100
------------------------------
Total: 3729   134      461  Total Score = 6,280,820

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

Impressive efforts and scores from W9RE and K5TR.  And K3ZO continues to inspire
with his love for the sport and big effort at age 80 plus.  

Great conditions on 10 & 15, which is good because I'm dealing with a
noise problem on 20 (S6) and it meant less time there.  It's showing
up on 80 meters too (S8).  I'm surprised I got as much productivity
out of 80 as I did.  The other bands are OK for the most part.  Oh,
and the source, not at my house, peaks at 60 - 75 degrees, right in line to
Europe.

15 meters the last two hours of the contest was wall to wall signals
from Asia and South America.  It was so good to hear all those JA's. I
just parked on a frequency the last 45 minutes and called CQ, enjoying
something we haven't had in many years.  

It's hard to stay on top of your game for the full period, especially when
fatigue sets in.  Overall things went very well with the exception of the 17 -
18 UTC hours on Sunday.  15 seemed to be slowing down earlier than on Saturday
so I decided to jump to 20 since my QSO totals were a bit low.  The next two
hours were a disaster, unable to get any sort of run going, having a hard time
getting calls from those who were calling.  I heard WX3B down at the bottom of
the band with a nice run going and panic starts to set in.  Why can't I get that
going?  It's all slipping away,  The 17 UTC hour produced a mere 58 Q's, 49 of
those on 15 before jumping to 20.  The 18 UTC hour just 59 QSO's on 20.         


Saturday afternoon the SWR on my 10 meter system started acting up.
The Alpha 87A would start to show excessive reflected power when I got
up around 500 watts forward, as if something was breaking down and
arcing over.  Not a good feeling.  First thoughts were it's probably
the stack match as it didn't matter which antenna I used or if they
were used together in a stack. It dawned on me to check the lightning
arrestor at the entrance panel, which I did later.  I bypassed it with
a piece of coax and bingo, problem solved in minutes!  That's an easy,
cheap fix.

Every year during this contest, this year was no exception, I swear to
the almighty I'm never doing SSB again, 40 plus hours.  Then I get
sucked in.  NN3W and I talked about our plans for this one earlier in
the summer.  He was going to PJ2T.  I had considered ET3AA, E2A, or
JT5DX, places I've operated from in the past.  Maybe next year.
Looking forward to this weekend, CW, 6 hours of off time, and the
noise source off the back of my antennas!


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