ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW - 2022
Call: N3CW
Operator(s): N3CW
Station: N3CW
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 22
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 216
40: 248
20: 169
15: 108
10: 9
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Total: 750 Sections = 84 Total Score = 126,000
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
This was a great edition of SSCW! So many top CW operators in one contest!
Great to work W4KFC; but next time he’s got to remove a filter cap and use a
bug for authenticity. It’s not an official SS without me working my best
friend since high school NC3Y, so I’m happy to say this is now an official SS.
Apologies to the folks I worked more than once, especially N4ZR; I did
occasionally fall for some bad spots and was too quick to hit the send button. I
wonder if the N1MM bandmap could detect potential bad spots and display them in
different color? And of course no contest is complete without accidentally
brushing against the pause/break key or the tilde key which results in all sorts
of N1MM and rig configuration mayhem. I wish N1MM had an “undo last command”
or some sort of selective key lockout feature to prevent this. As I think about
it, perhaps I can use something like Auto Hot Key to add those things, or
temporarily disable the troublemaker keys. This year I tried out one of the
N1MM add-ons called Mult Chaser. It provides a map of North America showing all
the available sections which get colored in as you work them. The smaller
sections are not easily identified, but I like how you can display the different
sections worked by band. Some N1MM statistics show that sections worked only
once included MB, NNY, PE, QC, and VI. A few will be thinking “where’s LAX
on that list?” Somehow I happened to work two of them. But seriously I can
understand the frustration of coming up short one section, as that’s been me
in many previous years. Each SS seems to have its missing-in-action section,
and this year the voting is favoring LAX. Some of the highest activity in my log
was from IL (42 stations worked), and MDC and MN (tied for 32 stations worked).
For comparison, my home state of Virginia gave me 29 stations worked. My best
hour was the first hour – 69 QSOs. As much as I can, I participate in the
weekly CW Ops CWTs (short one-hour mini-contests) for practice. It was nice to
hear and work my CW Ops friends in the SS, but I was very surprised in a good
way that almost all of the unfamiliar calls I worked seemed to be very skilled
CW ops. Other than the new-to-me callsigns, I could have been in a CWT session.
Most all the good ops appeared to adjust sending speed to that of the station
being worked. I do wish that when asking for fills, that it be standard practice
to send the fill twice so you don’t have to keep sending AGN over and over.
You are asking for a fill for a reason – most likely QRM, QRN, or QSB, and so
a quick 30 wpm fill can also be easily missed a second and third time if only
sent once. I only noticed a very few instances of a signal being too weak to
copy...almost all signals I recall were very solid copy, and so I will remember
this year’s edition of the SS CW as being a bit more enjoyable than usual.
Somehow I even avoided the Sunday afternoon brain fog...I’ll give credit to
some Hill City Sumatran coffee for that.
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