Back to back NAQP weekends. Last weekend was the NAQP CW contest and this weekend was the NAQP SSB contest.  The contest runs from 1pm to 1am local time for me where a single op can work 10 of the 12 hours. I was out with one of my daughters until the early afternoon but was able to get back home in time to put in close to the 10 hours.  A SSB contest feels like a lot more effort is needed then a CW and RTTY contest but with everyone running 100w, at least for me, the NAQP SSB contest is easier then a DX SSB contest. For all the effort though it is a real pleasure to speak with the ops that during a RTTY or CW contest get a canned message. I recognize a lot of the calls I have worked many times and some of the ops recognize mine and take a moment to say hello, thank you for all the contacts or complement you on your signal or audio.

I started around 3pm local time so I lost 2 hours of 20m time. I worked 20m for the first 2 hours. I tried 15m a couple times but only squeezed out a couple contacts. I thought maybe there would be more activity there since each state is a mult for each band, but 15m, at least for me, was dead. 20m got me the western states from the midwest on out and some of the southern states.

After 2 hours on 20m I switched to 40m for about 90 mins with only occasionally popping back to 20m to see if anything new was going on there but I didn’t find much more on 20m. 40m got me a bit more of the closer states but even some west coast thrown in. I switched to 80m for a few but it wasn’t busy yet and after logging what I could work I popped back to 40m.  I started on 80m around 6:30pm local time and that is where most of the activity was for me with occasional bounces back to 40m. In one of the times I popped back onto 40m I was able to work Alaska right at 8pm local time. Looking at my contacts when I went back to 40m for a few mins, besides Alaska I worked CA, WA, CO and KS.

80m was where I was able to work the nearby states in 3, 2 and 1 call areas, none of which were logged on any other bands. I did some S&Ping and then found a spot and had a productive run for about 1 hour or so where I was able to log a bit over 1 Q per min.  As the run dried out I did some S&Ping to catch what I could and then a couple of much smaller Runs over the course of the evening. From the summary you can see 2/3 of the contacts were on 80m.

I did try 160m once but on my G5RV and a LDG tuner I was not able to get a low enough SWR so my power was reduced and even a NJ contact I could hear fine couldn’t hear me well enough to log.  I’ll have to see what options I have to try and get something functional on 160m.

I didn’t work any Mexico or DX stations this time. For US States I missed Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, Montana and Nevada.  I didn’t log a bunch of Canadian Providences but those would typically be logged on 20m which I wasn’t on much.

I think about 10 hours straight on a phone contest is all my ears and voice can take. But I really enjoy the NAQP with the more leveled playing field and the very friendly ops. I was too pooped last night to upload everything so I did that this morning. Logs were uploaded to LoTW, eQSL, HRDLog and ClubLog. I’ve also submitted the log to NAQP. Next up in the NAQP is the RTTY contest the end of February. Off to 3830 to post my info.

Score Summary:

Band    QSOs     Pts  Sec   NA
 3.5     210     210   43    0
   7      46      46   22    0
  14      68      68   20    0
  21       3       3    2    0
Total    327     327   87    0

Score : 28,449

73 and happy contesting,
K2DSL