[UK-CONTEST] WPX - CW.

[brian coyne]

I did single band 20 mtrs this weekend with the usual low power entry.
 
How nice it would have been if the only thing to worry about was cut numbers!
 
No equipment problems or anything like that, just the vagaries of propagation.
 
I set a target of 1200 q's and 600 mlts with the aim of making No 1 place for Asia in my category.
 
I kicked off at 0600 local time (z + 3hrs) and was surprised to find the band buzzing with dx, not the usual watery UA9/0's. Cq'ing for me is no good at those times but I can pick a few off by calling them so it was not a bad start. Usually an hour or so after sun up  the UA4' 
6's 3's and east Eu start to come in in numbers and I can start to run. This contest whenever I tried to CQ the response was zilch. For the main part of the time the only guys I was hearing were the big guns. In the main that was the way it went, might was right this weekend, you needed a big gun to pull them in or a big antenna to hear the little pistols.
 
Eu is bread and butter for me and it was never really there, close in stuff was very patchy with isolated areas coming in then quickly fading out. I heard and worked very few G stns other than the usual contest gangs. I reckon you will all have heard the super stns at C4N and C4I on the band and not a squeak from me.
 
I can normally count on making the major number  of  contacts by running, this time I had to s&p the greater part of the 1100 odd q's  and to be honest I finished the contest exhausted, mentally and physically despite the 12 offtime hours we are allowed. It seems that there are many more linear users these days. I don't mean here the serious entrants but the casuals too. I am used to scrapping in dx pile ups to catch a needed mlt but when I have to battle it out and wait in line for 3 or 4 to go before me just to work an S5, DL or SP I know that had I not set out with a goal in mind the I would have wrapped it up by mid day Saturday!
 
To say that the daylight hours was pure slog is an understatement, what saved the contest was the late afternoons and evenings. Dx conditions were good and the band stayed open. Saturday was better than Sunday. I would like to have carried on through Sat night but I was just too beat by 2230z, being able to delay that break until 0700z would have paid dividends as the qso rate between that time and 1300z was abysmal.
 
Doing this one with a big stn on this band must have been pure joy, the path over the Pole was open for almost the whole of the contest, I never heard KL7 & KH6  audible for such long periods both days, same too with w6's and 7's. Japan was a disappointment, I always get a good run there but not this time. The far east stn's were also very thin on the ground, those I did hear and work were very strong which suggests poor support from that area.
 
What never fails to amaze me is reading the claimed scores on 3830 in the following days and noting certain stn's listing 1000 or more q's on 20mtrs. Now I just spent 35 hours on 
that band, mainly s&p'ing and never heard them! - how do we account for that?
 
Would I do it again? Well maybe not right now but next year? Most definately.
 
Claimed score - QSO 1128,   MLTS  620     POINTS   1,908,080.
 
Kenwood TS570 - 100w,  3ele yagi up 15mtrs. Unassisted.   Logging By SD.
 
73  Brian C4Z  (5B4AIZ)