CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2023
Call: WQ0RVO
Operator(s): WQ0RVO
Station: WQ0RVO
Class: SOAB HP
Class Overlay: Unassisted Classic
QTH: NFL
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 2
80: 58
40: 664
20: 519
15: 812
10: 60
------------
Total: 2115 Prefixes = 811 Total Score = 5,023,334
Club: Bavarian Contest Club
Comments:
Bandmap clicking is not my thing, so once again, Classic it was. Unfortunately,
that means you don't really get to work everyone, or experience all the magical
grayline openings, because you can only be on for half the contest time.
Additionally, only one radio is allowed, so it can be a little boring at times.
To spice things up, I decided to go incognito and use our rather bulky, brand
spanking new Qorvo Amateur Radio Group call sign WQ0RVO for 24 strategically
chosen hours and hand out the NN7 multiplier later, for as long as I felt like
it.
Operating WQ0RVO
Starting Fr night (local time) was rough, due to lots of QRN from a storm system
that was (luckily) heading away from FL. Static was around S9 at times on the
low bands, but I decided to ride it out in favor of more points per QSO,
planning to raid 20m and above the next day. 20m seemed open throughout the
night, so I spent about 2.5h before going to bed for 2h to be able to get up
again around sunrise.
Sa: Within two hours, I transitioned from 40m to 15m, where I stayed for about
six ours, only occasionally probing 20m and gathering multipliers on 10m. After
1.5h lunch break, it was rinse and repeat for another 4.5h, before I finally got
to bump up my 20m count through a 3h run till 8pm local. In favor of much better
rates, I spent the rest of my night on 40m before going to bed at midnight.
Su: After 7 hours of sleep, I worked the last ~120 stations on 15m and 10m until
I had reached 24h.
Operating NN7CW (Su only)
I took a short break, but curiosity drove me back into the shack quickly. How
much attention would the (this year underrepresented?) NN7 prefix draw? Once I
started calling CQ on 15m, I was greeted by a somewhat weaker, but pretty
intense wall of callers, most of them zero-beat on my frequency, continuously
hindering each other from being copied. Who thought one would ever have to work
split from Florida?! To prepare for an upcoming event, I seized the moment to
experiment with different speed and exchange settings until I decided to sort
things out by slowly moving up my rx frequency and work the callers who came
along. The situation calmed down to a normal level within an hour or so. From
there, I just kept working stations on 15m while occasionally switching to 10m
to see who's still up there for a total of 5.5h. After that, I enjoyed 3.5h of
decent rates on 20m until 40m became productive enough to work the last 143 QSOs
within about 1 1/4 hours. Total time on the air: 9h50min.
Observed conditions: As already mentioned, 40m and below were noisy Fr night.
40m had recovered a lot on Saturday, so to not screw up my rate, I did not even
check any lower band the second night. 20m seemed good throughout the first
night, while being worse on Sa during the day. On the one hand, signal levels
were not as high, but it surely also suffered from everyone enjoying a hopping
15m band throughout most of the contest. 10m seemed good, or at least okay, but
since prefix multipliers only count once in this contest, there is no reason for
any single operator to hang out on 10m for too long. Just pop in to pick up your
South America multipliers and scram.
Under NN7CW on Sunday, 15m seemed weaker than before, while 20m felt stronger.
How much, or how little that was amplified by people moving down and others
already gone, I don't know. It was fun to work many stations with relatively
moderate QSO counts, so I was glad to be around to hand out some points.
While I wish the 36h Unassisted category was brought back, one can either keep
whining (which I did plentiful), or make the most of what's left. I don't have a
desire to compete in the Assisted category, so I will probably just keep trying
to best the record of the Classic 4th Call Area category.
73 de Wolf, NN7CW
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