Topband: CQ WW Contest

[David Olean]

I think a lot depends on where you were located.  I am in southern Maine 
about 30 miles from salt water. I did a fair amount of listening for DX 
stations. I did not call CQ except for two brief periods late at night. 
My impression was that signals were not as good as many recent nights 
that I would call "excellent". Many big stations that are 599 on my K3 S 
meter on good evenings were hovering around S5 or maybe a bit better. 
Other stations that are normally good, were drifting down into my noise 
level with QSB.  I also noted that many EU stations did not answer me 
when  I called. After 5 or 6 tries, I would press ALT-W and go on up the 
band.  That could be the high QRM level in Europe as well as conditions. 
I just had the feeling that i was weak on the path to Europe. It 
happened all the time.  In my listening, I heard many stations farther 
south (W4 & W5) calling stations and I was surprised that they could 
hear them at all, seeing how weak they were here.  I began to think that 
something broke here!  K1DG was on in Maine from his island in the 
middle of salt water, and he seemed to do very well. I don't know what 
to say as I do not have the experience to adequately explain what 
happened.  Maybe if I called CQ for more than 45 minutes total I would 
have a different feel for how condx were. My take is that absorption can 
be quite variable over a fairly narrow geographical area, say a few 
hundred miles.

Dave K1WHS


On 1/29/2020 10:29 AM, Clive GM3POI wrote:
> Guy you only have to look at the past results for CQ160 to know that this
> year's conditions were not anywhere near as good as 2009. Then I worked
> around 700 US stations including all States and 57 St/Prov.
> Although last weekend weren't by the recent past bad, and hopefully just a
> stepping stone to better in the future. 73 Clive GM3POI
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces+clive=gm3poi.com at contesting.com] On
> Behalf Of Guy Olinger K2AV
> Sent: 29 January 2020 03:11
> To: Roger Kennedy
> Cc: TopBand List
> Subject: Re: Topband: CQ WW Contest
>
> Hi Roger,
>
> Just want to be sure we are both talking about the weekend of 25, 26
> January, 2020, the weekend of the 2020 CQ 160 CW contest. If so, I must
> register my decidedly firm impression that was the best 160 meter weekend of
> my lifetime, what has to be a counterpoint of the amazing 1958 sunspot
> maximum.
>
> In the contest I worked 1349 stations including 339 10 pointers (almost all
> the 10 pointers were European), let's just say 300+ European stations. In
> all of that I worked a 160 meter worked all states (48 CONUS + AK & HI),
> plus 9 Canadian provinces, 78 countries ("country" per the contest rules).
> That was a claimed score from the southeast USA (decidedly not the
> EU-advantaged northeast US) of 752,780.
>
> It was, by an enormous margin, my personal lifetime best for any 160 meter
> contest. The antenna did work very well, but, seriously, could not possibly
> have accounted for that bump up, nor for sure could my personal operating
> skills.
>
> Just think we need to leave room for the idea that maybe the band was a bit
> better than "open".
>
> Station here K3 + KPA1500, Inverted L over FCP, no RX antennas (working on
> that), NOT a superstation.
>
> Wowser, I wonder if we'll get that again before the sunspots start in
> again. I can hope.
>
> 73, Guy K2AV
>
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 3:27 PM Roger Kennedy
> <roger at wessexproductions.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Well conditions were reasonable over the weekend . . .
>>
>> I spent a total of about 3 hours on the band, and managed to work 48 NA
>> stations through all the European QRM.
>>
>> I'm sure I would have worked a lot more, as I heard many others calling
>> stations that were calling CQ . . . but I'm reluctant to put out a CQ call
>> in a contest, as I don't want to work hundreds of Europeans (I'm up in the
>> middle of the night to work some DX !)
>>
>> As I say, I wouldn't say conditions were particularly good, but the band
>> was
>> open.
>>
>>
>> Roger G3YRO
>>
>>
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