CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 45 11 26
80: 201 16 60
40: 356 26 96
20: 909 36 107
15: 755 29 106
10: 140 24 62
------------------------------
Total: 2406 141 457 Total Score = 4,080,154
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
Sometimes I get lucky.... On the Monday following CQWWSSB, a ferocious
Northeaster blew through and tore my sidemounted 40-2CD off the tower at 123'.
and destroyed a bunch of wire antennas. It remained dangling by the kevlar boom
guys for several days until Jeff, K1ZM, braved the unexpected 50-60 mph winds
the following Sunday, and we fixed up the 40-2cd and and some of the 20 meter
antennas. My most sincere thanks to Jeff for his efforts after the wind gusts
were blowing out the canvas tower bag and 20 lbs of tools and mast plates at a
45 degree angle! (On Monday after CQWWCW, we had another vicious Nor'easter and
falling trees took down some more wire antennas!)
After two more days of working in the woods with rope and slingshots, the other
wire antennas were back up and working. I was ready for CQWWCW!
Unfortunately the sun had other ideas about repeating its previous 27 days
cycle
that we enjoyed in CQWWSSB. With disturbed geomagnetic cndx and low solar flux
this was not looking promising.
Unlike most contests, this time on Friday I was well rested, the station was
working and I had time to operate for about 30 minutes prior to the contest.
I was ready and I was psyched. I was concerned about the high level of aurora
which really hurts us in New England, but I figured that it would abate by
Sunday and 10 would open.
>From 0000 - 0003z I called CQ CONTEST, with NO ANSWERS! This was a BAD sign.
When the EU stations finally started to call, they were about 30 db weaker than
usual. I knew that this was going to be a DIFFERENT sort of weekend when a 579
JT1CD starting calling cq on top of me on 40! I have never hear at JT1 that
loud on 40 at that time, and he was 3 s-units louder than the EU stations
calling him!
My run became a walk as he was much louder and more desirable to the EU's than
I! I called him in vain. It was the first of many such "heard and not worked"
episodes that weekend. A few minutes later, a 589 (shortpath!) 8Q7DV called in
and worked HIM (JT1CD). 8Q7DV didn't hear me either. Eventually JT1CD qsy'ed
and my "walk" became a run, until he came back again. End of run.
After that it was a real struggle as 40 went away and 80 was plain poor. I was
hearing the EU stations fine, but they were not hearing me. Running was almost
impossible so I "downshifted" my expectations and began the primary strategy for
the weekend, tune and call, tune and call, S&P, etc. If an EU station called
another EU station, I would have to wait. 80 and 40 continued to worsen and I
felt pitifully weak on 40, 80 and 160.
What had become clear was that on THIS weekend, more than most, every mile away
from the coast mattered, and you really needed the BIG antennas. I am about 140
miles from the Atlantic at the extreme Southwest edge of Connecticut near the NY
border. The guys in Eastern Mass and Southern NH were operating a completely
different contest from me and simply killing me on the low bands, (and then
again on 20 on Saturday and Sunday!)
I had some brief success at 05z on 160. I actually ran a few EU stations and
worked a bunch of others. I focused on collecting all the mults I could since I
wasn't making the q's. 06, 07 ands 08z were just like slogging through the muck
with low signal strengths, big qsb, rain static and what seemed like a glass
curtain on the auroral zone.
The 09 and 10z hours were endless. The highlight was a decent longpath opening
on 20 to Southeast Asia, the only times I heard those stations all weekend!
With great difficulty I worked HS72B, 9M6NA, VK6DXI, RK0UT and 4S7EA. But only
when no one else was calling!
40 was absolutely WILD! I heard 9M8YY, 9M6NA, BN0J, HS72B, VK9AA, AH2R, 9V1YC
a YB0 and many other stations. The pileups were insane and I didn't have the
slightest prayer of working any of them no matter how hard I tried.
20 barely opened at 11z and was so poor that I went at the first opportunity to
15 even though my 20 mult was very low. For a brief moment, 15 played and I had
a 205 hour! There was another decent 90 minutes but with constantly weakening
signals. I stayed on 15 for the q's and mults nervously debating with myself
about whether or not to try 10 which may or may not open. I decided to go to 10
later after a few stations came up to S5 and S6. In retrospect it was probably
a mistake to wait so long since 10 was dismal on Sunday. I had a very brief run
on 10 at 15z and when I went back to 15 was expecting to pick up where I left
off, but 15 was fading fast and I had to go to 20 for the duration at 17z! THIS
WAS BAD NEWS! 17z was decent on 20 with loud DL's and G's, but by 18z 20 was
fading fast for me. By 19z there was little to work with 20 almost dead and 40
hours sounding like it was many hours away from being runnable!
Making this even more painful, was the fact that I was listening on 40 to a
589
A61AJ and 579 A45XR run loads of EU stations at 19z. Neither A61AJ or A45XR
could hear me. When it got to the point that the LU's on 20 couldn't hear me, I
decided that I had had enough.
Normally it take me about three days to recover and work and family life suffers
in the aftermath. This time I decided that the struggle wasn't worth it for me
and Tuesday and Wednesday would be better spent productively rather than
recovering from pounding away in futility.
I came upstairs and ate Turkey and stuffing with my family, watched the tv movie
"Red Dawn" and wistfully thought of all the UA3's that I should be running on 20
and 40! :-) Interestingly enough, at the time that I quit,
K5ZD and I were within a few q's and mults of each other. Bascially a tie!
With cndx so poor though, even if I had know that, I still would have packed it
in.
I briefly got on for one hour at 2230z and quit for the night at about 2330z.
I got up bright and early at 1100z for the 20 meter run, which became decent
about 12z but rather than go to 15, I stayed on 20 for the q's and mults. I
bypassed 15 at 13z and went to 10 for what I hoped would be a run of q's and
mults. The signals were very poor and mostly skewpath. Despite the poor
opening (more like a "crack"), it seemed that I could have run stations if they
were on the band. The rate was awful. I tried 15 again at 14z but it was
almost gone! Finally at 15z I went to 20. 20 was open well and with almost no
q's in Northern Europe prior to this, I had a decent rate for 2 hours. At 17z
20 started going away for me, but not for a lot of other stations. I felt
"shut-out" again. I operated on and off for another 2-3 hours and then finally
stopped at 23z.
Sunday was basically run what I could with little effort made on or interest in
the 2nd radio.
After a "break" at 18z, I listened to 40 and was astounded to hear a DIRECT-PATH
569 VU2WAP AT 1800z!!! A DIRECT-PATH VU on 40 at 1PM, 4 1/2 hours before my
Sunset?!!! Later on, on 40 I heard a LOUD SU9NC, 5H3KK, 9N7BCC and many other
rare stations running EU like crazy. Simply no chance to work them. Even the
EU stations were having trouble hearing me!
Even with only 1 night + a few hours of operating on 40, I worked 26 zones and
96 countries. I heard 38 zones! and probably another 25 countries aside from
those that I worked. 40 was mind-boggling! Unfortunately I do not have the
antennas and location to capitalize on it.
I am continually amazed at the extraordinary amount of mults available in CQWW,
and the level of activity. In reading over the "writeups" of EU and US stations
alike, I am repeatedly struck by how common it was for an EU Single Band station
to make 2000+ q's on 40 or 80, while here in the US on the East Coast, the
biggest multi's rarely get close to that on 40 and rarely ever get 1000 on 80.
The EU activity is truly remarkable and part of what makes this contest so much
fun!
I have been noticing a trend over the past 18 months, that the West Coast,
Mid-West and Southeast stations are getting more and more decent openings even
as we are losing ours here in New England. It's good to see propagation
starting to equalize a little more in the "lean" years since it seems to pump up
the activity level of the US ops! May next year's contests have even better
openings with lower Aurora!
Special thanks to KH2/WX8C and V47KP who were the only stations that I passed to
other bands this weekend. Thanks to everyone else for all the q's and the
mults. Congratulations to all those stations who hung tough and operated all
weekend!
CU next year in CQWW.
73 and Happy Holidays!
Bob KQ2M kq2m@earthlink.net
BREAKDOWN QSO/mults KQ2M CQ WORLD WIDE DX CONTEST Single Operator
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 HR TOT CUM TOT
0 ..... ..... 82/41 10/20 ..... ..... 92/61 92/61
1 . . 45/7 15/18 . . 60/25 152/86
2 . 2/3 77/32 . . . 79/35 231/121
3 . 65/45 . . . . 65/45 296/166
4 8/9 13/4 12/1 5/3 . . 38/17 334/183
5 28/23 34/0 . . . . 62/23 396/206
6 1/1 35/5 12/2 10/7 . . 58/15 454/221
7 6/3 24/2 25/12 . . . 55/17 509/238
8 ..... 18/7 27/4 4/1 ..... ..... 49/12 558/250
9 . . 13/11 12/8 . . 25/19 583/269
10 1/1 10/10 4/2 . . . 15/13 598/282
11 . . 2/0 74/32 5/9 . 81/41 679/323
12 . . . . 197/38 . 197/38 876/361
13 . . . . 175/11 4/8 179/19 1055/380
14 . . . . 133/7 3/5 136/12 1191/392
15 . . . . 21/0 60/42 81/42 1272/434
16 ..... ..... ..... 22/6 65/7 3/4 90/17 1362/451
17 . . . 105/7 17/23 . 122/30 1484/481
18 . . . 43/7 12/6 12/8 67/21 1551/502
19 . . . 7/0 1/0 . 8/0 1559/502
20 . . . . . . . 1559/502
21 . . . . . . . 1559/502
22 . . 1/0 7/2 16/6 . 24/8 1583/510
23 . . 30/3 3/2 5/4 . 38/9 1621/519
0 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 1621/519
1 . . . . . . . 1621/519
2 . . . . . . . 1621/519
3 . . . . . . . 1621/519
4 . . . . . . . 1621/519
5 . . . . . . . 1621/519
6 . . . . . . . 1621/519
7 . . . . . . . 1621/519
8 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 1621/519
9 . . . . . . . 1621/519
10 . . . . . . . 1621/519
11 . . . 84/2 1/2 . 85/4 1706/523
12 . . . 135/3 . . 135/3 1841/526
13 . . . 4/0 6/0 50/10 60/10 1901/536
14 . . . 27/1 56/1 . 83/2 1984/538
15 . . . 112/3 1/0 . 113/3 2097/541
16 ..... ..... ..... 127/3 8/8 ..... 135/11 2232/552
17 . . . 55/2 4/3 3/3 62/8 2294/560
18 . . . 1/0 . . 1/0 2295/560
19 . . . 29/6 7/6 . 36/12 2331/572
20 . . 4/2 13/4 . 3/3 20/9 2351/581
21 . . 5/2 5/6 5/4 2/3 17/15 2368/596
22 1/0 . 17/2 . 20/0 . 38/2 2406/598
23 . . . . . . . 2406/598
DAY1 44/37 201/76 330/115 317/113 647/111 82/67 ..... 1621/519
DAY2 1/0 . 26/6 592/30 108/24 58/19 . 785/79
TOT 45/37 201/76 356/121 909/143 755/135 140/86 . 2406/598
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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