[SCCC] ARRL DX CW W4EF SOAB HP

[Michael Tope]

                  ARRLDXCW Summary Sheet

        Start Date : 2026-02-21

     CallSign Used : W4EF
       Operator(s) : W4EF

Operator Category : SINGLE-OP
              Band : ALL
             Power : HIGH
              Mode : CW
           Station : FIXED
          Assisted : NON-ASSISTED
       Transmitter : ONE

         Band     QSOs     Pts  Cty  Pt/Q
          1.8      14      42   12   3.0
          3.5      70     207   23   3.0
            7     307     918   58   3.0
           14     234     699   74   3.0
           21     448    1344   79   3.0
           28     313     939   52   3.0
        Total    1386    4149  298   3.0


             Score : 1,236,402


Did this one 100% remote. I worked on cultivating an "iron butt", but 
there were many moments when I was questioning my sanity given my level 
of physical discomfort. I am not a runner, but at those times of great 
discomfort I was trying to imagine the mindset a marathon runner has to 
adopt to keep going until the end of the course. My last nap helped 
(~20:00 UTC to 21:30 UTC), so the final 2.5 hours were surprisingly 
pleasant. However, getting up for the second day after a few hours sleep 
was really not pleasant, the temptation to call it quits at that point 
was 599++. Total chair time was ~34.5 hours.

One of these days I really need to get a second radio going, so I can 
chase mults and CQ simultaneously (chasing mults without assistance is 
satisfying, but very time consuming). Speaking of assistance, I noticed 
a few packet pileups where the spot frequency was off a few hundred 
Hertz. You could tell because every single caller was off the target 
station's frequency by the same amount 🙂.

The selective Auroral zone propagation during the disturbance on Sunday 
was interesting. Signals from Europe were mostly PW on 15 and 10. I 
heard one S5 on 10 meters who was definitely coming in skew path from 
the east-southeast. At roughly the same time, however, there were some 
extremely loud eastern European and Asians on 20 meters that were 
somehow making it past the high absorption from the solar hiccup (UW5Y 
just about blew me out of my chair when he called in).

Equipment problem wise, the only challenge was a flaky mouse which kept 
freezing up (and of course there is this operator's brain which can be 
pretty flaky as well 🙂).

73, Mike W4EF..........