CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB - 2021
Call: K2AX
Operator(s): K2AX NY3B KE2D
Station: K2AX
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: New Jersey
Operating Time (hrs): 40
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 49 9 30
80: 238 17 71
40: 250 27 90
20: 1251 37 118
15: 1047 31 122
10: 843 26 102
------------------------------
Total: 3678 147 533 Total Score = 7,089,680
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
Friday night seemed to start slow but wasn’t horrible. It just seemed like
the rate was low and we had expected to do better with what seemed like decent
propagation and an SFI of 108 with only moderate A and K indices. Pre-game
casual QSOs all afternoon and into the early evening gave us numerous reports of
“booming signal” and “great audio” but somehow that didn’t pay off
immediately like we hoped.
Things improved considerably on Saturday. We did great on 20m with a long solid
run and 15m was open to EU and then later SA, the Caribbean, and eventually the
Pacific. 15m was so packed on Saturday we had a hard time getting a foothold
and creating any decent runs there. 10m opened to EU for a short while also on
Saturday with some decent propagation to the south as well and we racked up a
little over 200 Qs there which was already way ahead of last year or any year in
recent memory. On Saturday night we still couldn’t get the low bands to
produce as well as we’d like but we got what we could from them before turning
in for a few hour sleep.
We were up well before sunrise on Sunday morning and got a solid run going on
20m as well as 15m. Steve pushed 20m well over 900 (closing on 1k) before 10 am
EDT while I more than doubled the Qs on 15m and got it over 700. Steve switched
to 10m while I was still working on 15m and after picking off some mults there,
he began to run. I joked that it would be nice to get 500 QSOs on 10m but
apparently I underestimated. Steve was working mostly Europe on his initial
run. I picked up the tail end of that and when EU died off I pointed the
antennas south and managed to run SA for a while more. Having had several years
of 10m drought, we weren’t expecting to get over 800 QSOs on 10m. Before it
died off, I wondered if it might be possible to make it the third band with over
1k QSOs but that didn’t happen (maybe next year).
It was nice to work JA on 15m again. I saw JA spotted on 10m a couple times but
never heard them. Working NH2 and 5W1 on 15m in the early afternoon was fun.
Some other great DX too like 7P8 and 7Q6.
Murphy was merciful this year unlike last (multiple rotator problems and a 40m
antenna failure before the start). Some of the minor station improvements paid
off, including the two new (to us) Windows 10 computers that replaced the legacy
Win 7 machines we had been running. Big thanks to KA2K and KC2TN for putting in
time last spring in the post season to do the computer upgrades. Thanks also to
KA2K for spending time helping us get the station setup and checked out in the
two weekends before the contest. We heard fellow FRC members all over the place
and worked few of them for multipliers.
When the dust settled and the contest ended, we had doubled our raw score vs
last year. From what I can tell, this score will most likely be the new record
for K2AX M2 in CQ WW SSB, even if we take a significant score reduction post log
checking.
As usual we are grateful to Mark, Donna and the rest of the O’Brien family for
the use of the great station, their hospitality, and letting us invade their
lives for the weekend.
KE2D
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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