CQWW WPX Contest, SSB - 2023
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
Class Overlay: Unassisted
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 35.9
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 1
80: 212
40: 747
20: 856
15: 1638
10: 724
------------
Total: 4178 Prefixes = 1227 Total Score = 14,144,856
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
DX contests in 2023 have had a consistent trend: MASSIVE Solar Flare,
Geomagnetic storm, AURORA. Frankly, it’s been quite irritating.
And WPXSSB, my favorite DX contest, outdid itself with an X-Class flare on
Friday afternoon of the contest with a K index = 7 to greet us at 00z. I have
operated DX contests since 1973 and only TWO ever had a K=7 or higher and I
remember BOTH of them very well. They SUCKED! LOL.
If it were not WPXSSB, I would have done something else during the weekend
(work, sleep, etc.) but then I would have missed one of the most interesting
weekends of the radio that I can ever recall! Sometimes you get lucky!
Two days before, a raging Nor’easter tore up my 160 Inverted L. I did not
have the time to fix it before the contest and was not happy. 160, although not
a big band in WPXSSB, is good for some 6 point EU stations with the 2nd radio
and a few VE/US stations, but only if you have an antenna. Now I did not, but I
wasn’t going to worry about it.
A few years ago, the WPX Contest Director decided to eliminate the SO AB
NON-Assisted category for reasons that were never clear to me and now, the SOAB
category allowed the use of Spotting Networks and other forms of Assistance.
This meant that you could choose to use Spotting Networks and be SO, or you
could operate without them and be at a HUGE disadvantage to your competitors in
the SOAB category. The contest director’s decision appalled me especially
since he did NOT inquire of the contest community as to whether or not WE the
OPERATORS and SUPPORTERS of the contest, wanted the category eliminated. (The
answer I am sure would have been a resounding HELL NO!) In my opinion, there
was and still is no valid reason to eliminate the NON-Assisted category;
furthermore the use of spotting networks is NOT what SOAB means to me. So I
decided to operate in my usual way, as NON-Assisted and WITHOUT the benefit of
spotting networks, skimmers, pan-adapters, waterfall displays, etc.
At 00z, I heard flutter on close-in US stations. In addition, it was very windy
and sleeting and qrn was high. I decided to start on 10 and work the few loud
CA/SA stations that I could hear since I had expected 10 to be dead, and then
went to 20 to run stateside before that band quickly died. Finally, I qsy’ed
to the “ Snakepit “ of 40 SSB, where surprisingly I was able to squeeze into
a relatively clear spot and have a good run of EU before the walls of qrm closed
in. The 00z hour provided 142 q’s and 117 mults over three bands and the
decent 40 M run continued until it too finally succumbed to the now K=8 cndx
with auroral flutter on everything, but not before I made 127 q’s with another
89 mults in the 01z hour. I then qsy’ed to 80 around 03z and had another good
run until EU died out early and I ran US for a while, switching to 40 around
0530z and then S & P’ing on 20. At 06z, I worked some VK’s on 20 while
running on 80 and then went qrt at 0617z with 680 q’s and 412 mults, my best
ever start in WPXSSB!
By now the K had backed off to 5 but with the Solar Wind speed > 500 kp/s and
proton density EXTREMELY high > 13, there was very little to work on any
band. Being able to run US kept the rates fairly high when EU faded out early
due to the highly disturbed cndx, and that was ok for Friday night, but it would
not make up for a lack of EU from a Northern latitude on Saturday or Sunday.
Saturday morning I was up at 1030z making my preparations and missed the very
beginning of the 20 meter opening to EU. Some stations were loud but not many.
20 was struggling to open even at W1 sunrise ~ 1120z and by the time I found a
good freq., the band noise changed, signal strengths dropped 30 – 40 db and an
occasional Asian station would be all that called. EU stations had apparently
moved right to 15 and so did I at 1212z, right after the auroral noise began on
20. 15 opened the same way – with spotlight propagation. I could work a few
LOUD DL3’s and then a DL4 or DL7 would be barely audible. Then a few IZ1
stations might call even as I could barely hear an I6. Countries would take
turns being heard, one or two at a time. It was very rate limiting and then the
rate died again, so I went back to 20, which was just as bad as before. Oddly
enough while I was tuning 15 with the 2nd radio, I found UP2L who was 59!
Unfortunately that was all that I heard on 15. Back on 20 there was an
occasional JA/VK/Asian station caller with a few EU mixed in but 20 was done and
I qsy’ed back to 15 @ 1321z. 15 did not stay open for long enough and
cq’ing on 20 was not productive. It simply would NOT cooperate. JA’s and
Asian stations did not want to bother with 20 when they could be on 15 and 10
instead; who could blame them?
13z was disappointing with only 91 q’s but then starting with the 14z hour,
everything changed and the next 11 hours had rates between 104 – 159 qso’s
per hour. 15 opened to Russia at 14z but very few stations called. Absorption
was high and then K index climbed to 6! I persisted running and 15 slowly
opened further and better. There was no BIG hour like I usually see when the
band EXPLODES open – rather, callers were limited to wherever the propagation
spotlight was pointing at that moment. One time it was RT4, R4, UA4 and then
nothing, then PA9, PA0, then IZ7, then OK1 and then a few G’s. Thankfully the
Solar Flux and Sunspot number was high enough to keep the band open but there
was never anything close to a 200 hour. The best that I could do was maybe a
burst of 30 – 40 stations in 10 minutes, quiet for 1- 3 minutes and then the
next burst. 10 remained non-functional except for an occasional LOUD IT9 or EA8
and South / Central Americans. Cndx were very weird though: on 10, a few W7
stations were loudest on my lowest 10 M yagi @ 23’ pointed NE (Europe) and
then disappeared when I pointed my top 10 yagi WNW - right at them!
Unlike past WPXSSB contests when I focused almost exclusively on working EU,
this weekend I was forced by mediocre propagation to keep antennas pointed West
or South for much of the time. The result was predictable – more qso’s and
more mults - but with a lower average point / qso value.
15 remained the mainstay band all day – I relentlessly pounded out the CQ’s
to capture whatever callers wandered by and occasionally picked off SA/CA on 10
with the second radio. The windy cndx continued with rain and occasional sleet
and that caused “drumbeats” when listening on my 15 M stack which meant that
I would have to call CQ on the top antennas and then manually switch back to the
lower antennas to listen and the back again before I transmitted – this went
on for about 30 minutes, stopped and then the qrn restarted again with another
period of manual switching required. At some points the pounding became so bad
that I could not copy anyone on any combination of antennas and all I could do
was to call CQ and hope that someone loud enough would call me so I could hear
them through the QRN. I even tried to work stations on 20 on the 2nd radio but
cndx were so poor they couldn’t pick out my call. Also making operating
challenging was the poor audio quality of CR6K who was 4 – 5 kc wide and
splattering from 2 kc below me to 3 kc above me and making it impossible to copy
anyone at times.
At one point I asked him nicely to please turn down his processor because he was
loud and splattering badly – he said “It is not possible - I am NOT
splattering”. I then asked him to please move down a little and he said
“NO, I will not!” His splatter was so bad that there was no one
transmitting between his freq. 2 kc below me to 3kc above me – a total of 5 kc
wide! OM – if someone tells you that you are splattering, take their word for
it and turn down you mic gain – don’t argue with them. We all have to share
the same band and you should not be able to gain an advantage by qrming others
with a poor quality signal that keeps people away and keeps your run freq. quiet
while you QRM their run freq!
Adding to the challenge, was that my heart arrhythmias suddenly appeared and
then rapidly morphed into AFIB, which left me lightheaded and badly out of
breath. I took more heart medicine which after about 20 minutes helped to calm
things down but then made me extremely tired and brought on a severe episode of
microsleeps. Right before 15 died, there was a brief 10 minute period of high
angle opening where signals were loudest on the 30’ high yagi. This is common
at the top of the sunspot cycle but was rather strange for this weekend!
At 1937z I qsy’ed to 20 and with only 250 stations in the log at that point, I
was “fresh meat”. It had taken a while but now I had my first BIG pileup
and it was very hard to copy anyone through the QRM of the callers, some of whom
just continued to call whether I was transmitting or not. This slowed the rate
considerably. I would ask “G3XY? what is your call?” And then G3XY? HA8,
R4, IZ1 and several others would call me. I would then say “G3XY? ONLY what is
your call?” and then this time G3XY?, HA8 and IZ1 would call. Finally on the
3rd try, I would get G3XY’s call through two other newcomers transmitting on
top of him and then me. If everyone had cooperated, in the time that it took me
to work G3XY I could have worked 10 more stations. It wastes everyone’s time
when people are impatient and operate poorly!
19z, the transition hour from 15 to 20, had 138 q’s and 20z the first full
hour on 20 had 157q’s. 21 and 22z provided 125 and 129 as well and those 4
hours packed in 105 mults! The opening improved late in the 21z hour with
Sunrise in Asia – B7C called at 2148z followed by FR8UA at 2158z and a VERY
loud Champ, E2A at 2205z and E27EK at 2206z. Champ was even louder than the EU
stations! As cndx improved I was also called by notable DX stations YB4NY,
NL7V, A73A, VU2ZMK. As the opening widened in the 23z hour, VJ5W, VK3X, BI4SSB,
BY1RX, YB0ECT all called in before 2317z. While I had wanted to stay on 20 and
work more exotic prefixes, 20 was beginning to fade and it was either qsy to 40
and try to run EU or to run West Coast on 15 and hope for some JA’s to call
in. It was a MAJOR strategy decision!. A few 6 pointers on 40 in tremendous
qrm mixed in with mostly 1 pointers, or the relative quiet of 15 with the tiny
possibility of a good prefix run if the band opened to JA / Asia.
With the K falling now from 6 to 2, the A index plummeting from 66 to 12, Bz
moving up to around Zero, and the Solar Wind and Proton Density dropping sharply
with SSN and SFI numbers rising, qsying to 15 seemed like the right thing to do!
I found a spot high in the band, called CQ and was immediately answered by B7P
and he was followed by another 70 JA, BY, YB, VK, ZL stations and lots of
SA/CA, US and VE callers for 106 qsos and 44 mults in the 23z hour. What a
blast! The rate was good, there were a lot of stations that were new mults and
then the band opened to JA!
This was what I had been hoping for and the smorgasbord of prefixes was great
for the score. It woke me up and gave me hope that cndx would improve for
Saturday night into Sunday.
At 0000z, “halftime” which also coincided with about 18 hours operated (half
of the 36 hours allowed), I had 2246 qsos x 904 mults for ~ 5,000,000 pts. A
lower score than I had hoped but far better than I had feared.
Having operated 18 hours so far, it meant that I could operate 18 of the next 24
which I knew would have better propagation and better runs with more interesting
prefixes. I was looking forward to it!
The 00z hour run continued with good cndx and I worked another 104 qsos and 40
mults with many JA, BY, KL and VK stations along with DU9/W1JET calling in with
SA/CA and US/VE as well. I knew this could not last much longer and by 0120z
the band was fading fast. 10 never did open to JA from W1 but at least I had my
15 M JA run! I tried to run more on 20 but there was not much coming through in
the 01z hour which ended with 65 qsos and 18 mults, the last few coming on 40.
With 20 mostly dead it meant that it was time to put on my armor, warm up the
flame-thrower and psych myself up for 40 meter SSB Championship Wrestling LOL!
It started well with the 02z hour on 40 providing 126 qsos and 18 mults but cndx
were erratic and generally fading fast with the 03z hour providing 46 qsos.
I qsy’ed to 80 confidently, certain that cndx would be better than Friday and
that I would have some good rates there. WRONG! I heard a few loud EU stations
but I had already worked them. There were quite a few good clear frequencies
but I noticed that I was not getting ANY answers to my cq’s. This did not
make any sense. I had worked only about 200 stations on 80 so there were plenty
more to work, but NO ONE called! It had been very windy outside so I wondered
if the 80 meter 4-square had broken? I tuned around listening to some US and EU
stations and no matter which direction I listened with the 4-square, there was
no change in signal strength. The 4-square had no pattern! I called 2 stations
and they did not hear me. Oh s**t! Now I had lost my 80 meter 4-square. That
meant I might have to spend all night on 40 SSB. UGH!
I toyed with the idea of going out in strong winds and rain with a flashlight
and climbing up my wet, slippery mini-cliff to find which leg(s) of the 80
4-square needed to be fixed, but it really was too dangerous. I could easily
fall and with no one home but me, if I slipped and got hurt I would have no one
to help me while I got drenched. This did not appeal to me at all. Instead I
was determined to work 40 hard and then go to sleep early. Thankfully I was
able to continue running on 40 while I was having problems on 80 so I lost very
little operating time. I realized that it was best to take an hour off-time
from 0324z – 0435z, eat something, relax, plan what to do and then get back on
in time for EU sunrise.
At 0435z I grit my teeth and vowed to make 40 work for me and 40 though was full
of surprises. Where it had died for me early on Friday night, it now stayed
open for me later on Saturday night! The rates were not great but there were
enough EU stations to make it worthwhile together with US/SA/CA stations with
prefixes that I needed.
At 0539 I had operated 23.3 hours and made 2673 qso’s and 1000 mults = 7.321
Million pts. I had increased my score 45% in the past 5 ½ hours!
Unbeknownst to be, while I was operating the K index had spiked back to 5 and
the SW and Proton Density had both also spiked to high numbers. End of the good
cndx. At 0628z I went qrt. I planned to get on early for a good start on 20.
Sunday morning, back on the radio early at 0959z, on a good freq. on 20 and
waiting for the band to open with K = 5 again, there were no callers. Then a
caller or two every so often and then NOTHING! Finally at EU sunrise, a burst
of callers and I got psyched, but the run fizzled out. The band noise changed,
and EU signals got weaker. An occasional VK called in longpath but no run. 20
was simply not going to open for me. UGH!
The 10z hour had a pitiful 47 qsos including 4 S & P on 40, and at 1100z I
heard a 59 SO9I and a few loud Italians on 15 but that was as good as it got.
No one answered my q’s on 15 and 20 was so bad that 10 minutes later no one
had bothered to take my 20 M run freq! I persisted on 20 before moving back to
15 again late in the hour. The 11z hour had a miserable 51 qsos but right at
the end the band began opening better and UP0L called in 59+ on 15!
I was struggling on 15 but realized that 20 was almost dead and NOT an option.
Then suddenly the K dropped to 3 and Bz turned positive again and 15 re-OPENED!
Lucky break for sure! But again, spotlight propagation, no big band opening.
Signals were definitely louder now and some Asians like YB1AM, YB0DPZ, 7A0C,
YB1RKT, etc. started calling in after 1230z along with louder Northern EU and
Russian stations, all with new prefixes. The 12z hour provided 147 qsos with
37 mults and THEN the band really opened! For the next 30 minutes there were
many TREMENDOUS propagation fades and spikes of 50+ db occurring every few
minutes. It was like listening to the audio equivalent of what a Yo-Yo does.
UP and down, UP and down. Again and again and again. I have never experienced
anything like it. And then early in the 13z hour, signals got even stronger,
more YB’s called in along with HS5NMF and the band noise started to change on
15 as the signals get louder. I had heard this before and I knew what it meant.
That it was time to listen on 10. Sure enough the few IT9 and EA8 stations
suddenly got 2-3 s-units louder and then I heard a 59+ ES9UKR on 10! And I KNEW
that I had to be on 10 NOW!
I immediately qsy’ed to 10 @ 1328z and started to RUN!
Signals were generally pretty weak at first and there was spotlight propagation
but I only had 20 qso’s on 10 and that meant that everyone had to work me!
There was NO EXPLOSION, no din of callers, just 1 – 3 at a time with
incredibly fast and deep qsb. But 10 was unmistakably open!
And I stayed on my freq. on 10 for the next 4 hours, experiencing that same odd
but persistent spotlight propagation phenomenon – UA4 opening, G opening, DL
opening, I opening, PA opening and then back and forth and seemingly random with
some occasional VERY LOUD mid-Eastern stations, a VP8 and a few other rare mults
calling in. At times some of the Russian stations were 59+20 – 59+30 followed
immediately by S2 US/CA/SA stations. Never more than 10 stations calling at one
time and oftentimes only 1 at ESP level. In fact, at least 1/3 of the 10 Meter
callers were S2 or less and barely audible. The slightest bit of qsb/qrn and
they vanished. And then a Northern EU station would call in S9+ and then right
back to ESP level again. What a strange and wonderful band!
But not all was great. The impact of all that sleep deprivation was hammering
me so I attempted new techniques to fight the relentless microsleeps but they
overpowered me due to the lack of sleep plus the heavily sedating effects of my
medicines. I woke up many times to a quiet frequency with part of a callsign
in my logging program. There was nothing that I could do except to remove it
and call CQ again. I wondered how many qso’s per hour this was costing me and
how many stations would unfairly get a NIL from me in the Log checking report
because of this? Very frustrating!
10 quit early, but not before I had 4 good run hours with rates of 148, 165, 165
and 113 qsos between 14z – 17z, along with another 78 more mults!
The auroral noise came back at 1720z as the K index spiked to 5 again and
signaled the beginning of the end of the 10 M run.
At 1819z I qsyed to 15 and was met with a ROARING pileup of super-loud EU
stations, as the K dropped to 1.33 – the low for the weekend. I had never
seen the K index vary up and down so fast and with such ENORMOUS propagation
swings in such incredibly short periods of time. From dead band to 59+30
signals in a matter of minutes, and then back again to quiet band and no
callers, and then back again to 59+30 signals in a few minutes. Those were some
of the most dramatic propagation changes that I had ever seen! 15 meters had
incredible spotlight propagation with Commercial broadcast signal loudness –
reminiscent of top of the cycle conditions, and which seemed to favor Poland.
It was cool to have a run of super loud SP stations one after another for about
20 minutes, followed by RZ9WU calling in early at 1846z and R9GM and FR8UA at
1847 and 1849z. 18z had 131s qso followed by another 150 in the 19z hour with
VU2CPL and 7Z1VD calling in.
By now I had 1600 qsos on 15 with only 800 on 20 and thinking that 20 should be
open well, I qsy’ed there. 20 however was not open well and because 15 was
still hot, everyone had probably stayed there. I realized my mistake and
planned out my remaining time and what bands I wanted to be on. I took
offtime at 2038z and was back on 15 at 2257 for my final hour, and hopefully
more JA and Asian stations.
I cq’ed on 15 and hunted mults on 10 / 20 and then cq’ed 20 and hunted mults
on 15. There were only a few JA’s on 15 with the poorer cndx (K was back to
4) but 20 was productive and brought in mults.
I finished with 4178 qsos and 1227 mults = 14,144,856 in 36 hours.
NON-Assisted
There were some nice surprises…. Instead of the usual doubling of my score
between 18 and 36 hours, this time my score almost TRIPLED; from 5 million to 14
million!
Just as surprising to me was 2246 qsos on day 1 and 1932 qsos on day 2 86% of
day 1! Normally on Day 2 I make only about 60% of the day 1 qsos.
During this contest weekend I had experienced the worst bottom of the cycle
conditions followed by some of the best top of the cycle conditions, all within
24 hours! Had it been any contest other than WPXSSB I would have quit and done
something else for the rest of the weekend. But because it was my favorite
contest, I stayed on, and enjoyed it immensely. You never know what is going to
happen!
Also, after the weekend I checked out my 80 M 4-square. It was working fine.
Apparently cndx were so weird Saturday evening that my 4-square appeared to be
patternless and not working but in reality it WAS working fine. I have never
experienced that before except when it was actually broken!
Although the contest was maddening at time with awful conditions PLUS qrn from
wind and sleet, there were other times when propagation was spectacular and with
excellent runs! Overall it was lots of fun, I worked hard and I learned a few
new things. What more can you ask for?
It was a great pleasure to say hello to so many old friends and make new ones.
That is the best part of radio contesting after almost 50 year of contesting!
I was very happy to hear so many Ukraine contesters on this weekend.
Thank you for the qso’s and the qsy’s and for the spotting me during the
contest which really helped me a lot! CU in WPXCW!
Vy 73
Bob, KQ2M
BREAKDOWN QSO/mults KQ2M CQ WORLD WIDE PREFIX CONTEST Single Operator
HOUR 160 80 40 20 15 10 HR TOT CUM TOT
0 ..... ..... 99/84 26/23 ..... 17/10 142/117 142/117
1 . . 124/86 3/3 . . 127/89 269/206
2 1/1 1/1 97/62 17/12 . . 116/76 385/282
3 . 73/32 30/17 . . . 103/49 488/331
4 . 96/37 . 10/6 . . 106/43 594/374
5 . 30/10 32/15 5/5 . . 67/30 661/404
6 . 12/5 4/0 3/3 . . 19/8 680/412
7 . . . . . . . 680/412
8 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 680/412
9 . . . . . . . 680/412
10 . . . . . . . 680/412
11 . . . 60/35 3/0 . 63/35 743/447
12 . . . 25/9 42/24 . 67/33 810/480
13 . . . 34/12 57/27 . 91/39 901/519
14 . . . . 131/56 . 131/56 1032/575
15 . . . . 130/44 3/3 133/47 1165/622
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... 159/57 ..... 159/57 1324/679
17 . . . . 138/40 . 138/40 1462/719
18 . . . . 129/36 . 129/36 1591/755
19 . . . 71/8 66/14 1/0 138/22 1729/777
20 . . . 157/32 . . 157/32 1886/809
21 . . . 125/26 . . 125/26 2011/835
22 . . . 129/25 . . 129/25 2140/860
23 . . . 29/9 76/35 1/0 106/44 2246/904
0 ..... ..... ..... ..... 104/40 ..... 104/40 2350/944
1 . . 7/2 36/13 22/3 . 65/18 2415/962
2 . . 126/18 . . . 126/18 2541/980
3 . . 46/4 . . . 46/4 2587/984
4 . . 41/5 . . . 41/5 2628/989
5 . . 90/16 . . . 90/162718/1005
6 . . 47/7 . . . 47/7 2765/1012
7 . . . . . . . 2765/1012
8 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... .....2765/1012
9 . . . 2/0 . . 2/0 2767/1012
10 . . 4/1 42/7 1/1 . 47/9 2814/1021
11 . . . 28/4 23/3 . 51/7 2865/1028
12 . . . . 143/35 2/2 145/373010/1065
13 . . . . 73/17 67/14 140/313150/1096
14 . . . . . 148/20 148/203298/1116
15 . . . . . 165/31 165/313463/1147
16 ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 165/17 165/173628/1164
17 . . . . . 113/10 113/103741/1174
18 . . . . 98/5 33/5 131/103872/1184
19 . . . . 150/18 . 150/184022/1202
20 . . . 15/1 39/4 . 54/5 4076/1207
21 . . . . . . . 4076/1207
22 . . . . 4/2 . 4/2 4080/1209
23 . . . 39/3 50/7 9/7 98/184178/1227
DAY1 1/1 212/85 386/264 694/208 931/333 22/13 ..... 2246/904
DAY2 . . 361/53 162/28 707/135 702/106 . 1932/322
TOT 1/1 212/85 747/317 856/236 1638/468 724/119 . 4178/1227
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