In 2010 I had a very good performance in the CQ WPX RTTY amateur radio contest and it will be a tough one for me to beat. For a couple of weeks last February the conditions improved and making contacts came easy. This weekend it doesn’t seem like the conditions were as good and the contacts came a bit tougher. The contest allows a single operator to be on for 30 hours out of the 48 hours a multi-op station can operate.
Started operating Friday night as the contest began and primarily worked 40 & 80 with some quick checks on 20m which showed some signs of light. About 2.5 hours in I worked RI1ANC in Antarctica. It was the first time I worked that particular Antarctica station. I ended Fri night with 176 Qs and 65,682 points @ 0533z logging 16 zones & 33 DXCC entities.
Got on Saturday morning after about a 6.5 hour sleep. I spun through 80m and 40m and then checked 15m to log a handful of stations before moving to 20m. I checked 10m late in the morning and ended up working about 8 DX stations on 10m which was pretty neat. At1948z I worked the S9DX Sao Tome DXpedition for a new entity for me. All stations were calling on top of each other over and over. As soon as they stopped I put my low power call out once and got them. Sometimes smart beats muscle! As it started to get later 40m was the place to be and I moved between 40 & 80 and checked 20m from time to time. Finished Sat night at 0446z (11:46pm) with 615 Q’s and 465,105 pts. Logged contacts in 25 zones & 65 DXCC entities. With that QSO count I was a little optimistic that I could approach last years total.
Sunday I had a conference call that started at 8:30 and lasted through to about 5:30. I left it on speaker phone and worked the contest in between having to be active on the call, which is a length of call that anyone would need to consider Business Phone deals for.. Activity, at least from my seat, slowed down drastically on Sunday. Most of the day was spent on 15 & 20m working anyone I could. A couple of checks on 10m resulted in just 2 additional stations heard/logged. Any station I could hear on 10m I worked easily on the first call. In the afternoon the JA stations were coming in strong and I was able to work a couple. I also heard and had perfect copy on B3C in China. It was the first time I copied a station in China but the pileup was huge and he was working west coast stations so after a few attempts I tuned around to work other stations. In the late afternoon I started checking 40m and was able to make some contacts there as the clock started to wind down on my 30 hours and at 2245z the last contact was made.
I ended up with just under 200 additional contacts on Sunday and came up short vs my 2010 score but it was a good weekend. I worked 25 out of the 40 CQ zones and 72 different DXCC entities. I logged 11 Alaska contacts with KL7RA being worked on 3 bands. I don’t think I worked that many Alaska stations in a single contest. I still haven’t worked an Alaska station on 80m. It’s the only state I haven’t worked on 80m. All the others are worked and confirmed on LoTW.
Here’s a map of the contacts made over the weekend (click to see a larger view):
Here’s the summary from N1MM:
Band QSOs Pts WPX 3.5 177 426 70 7 183 558 96 14 293 595 145 21 146 333 61 28 10 30 3 Total 809 1942 375 Score : 728,250
73 & good DX!
K2DSL