[3830] WPX SSB N8II SOAB Unassisted Classic LP

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                    CQWW WPX Contest, SSB - 2023

Call: N8II
Operator(s): N8II
Station: N8II

Class: SOAB LP
Class Overlay: Unassisted Classic 
QTH: WV
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:    0
   40:  407
   20:  297
   15:  259
   10:  407
------------
Total: 1208  Prefixes = 634  Total Score = 1,777,102

Club: 

Comments:

More than once I considered quitting in this test due to the very poor
conditions than persisted after the major solar storm Thursday night. I spoke
with a ham from Edmonton, AB on Monday who said that every night since Thursday
he had seen visible aurora and the display was huge on Thursday. Stations to the
south were not affected that much, but here there was a huge impact. I heard
more FL stations on 15/10M than expected, suspect Es. If you were in the Gulf
Coast states you had a huge advantage over us in the Mid Atlantic and farther
north. Very few stations from northern EU were heard until late Saturday
afternoon and 40M was nearly totally closed to EU the first night at 02Z.
Starting at 1845Z Saturday things began to normalize with strong signals on 10M
from the western USA. Late afternoon a few Scandinavians were booming in on
auroral E on 15M. Both days the high bands were very slow to open to EU with
almost no EU worked on 10 Saturday. Saturday at 12Z was interesting on 20 with
loud signals from YB and VK and one JH8 worked. Sunday YB was was weaker, but I
ran a 9J2 and a few VK's. Saturday was back to normal pretty much on 40; I had a
fantastic NA run starting
at 0045Z just above 7200 running 152 stations in the first hour with best 10
minute rate at 198/hr. 
I had a real treat when FW1JG called me at 2235Z Saturday on 10M; in my 52 years
on the air, I don't think this country has ever called me. Per his QRZ page, he
runs 100W to a spider beam at very low height (maybe 10ft), but he had worked
over 800 Q's. Right after a couple of loud VK's called as well. The EU opening
and runs on 10M Sunday kept me in the chair, but I ran far fewer than well
equipped HP stations. The band started opening well at 1345Z and I kept a pretty
good rate going until lunch break at 1707Z S&P + runs.

Murphy struck in a very weird way. I took an afternoon break (starting to run
low on the 24 hours op time) and took the XYL out for a ride to see the local
blooms including Yoshino Cherry trees. After more than an hour that the
FTDX-101D was off, it refused to transmit when I started back up with an ominous
flashing red TX icon. No way was anything overheated and I had not done anything
that might damage the finals. So in my tired state, I dragged out the old
FT-1000 and set it up having no voice keyer to call CQ in the last hour on 40. I
missed enough of planned EU on 20 to maybe lose 30-60K, but did get up to the
official 24 hours limit for Classic. Actual op time was maybe 30 minutes less.
Interesting that around my sunset EU was weak on 40 and I could have run below
7200 which I discovered too late. On Monday I retried the 101D and it has
functioned fine
ever since!

Congrats to Ed, N1UR running AC1U for a another stellar LP effort, quite a huge
QSO and mult total! Also of mention was Tim, N3QE with no yagi running up over 4
million points HP. Thanks for all of the Q's and calls. This one will be hard to
forget! My best WPX SSB score in quite a long time.

73, Jeff


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