CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2023
Call: K2AX
Operator(s): K2AX AK2S AA3K KE2D
Station: K2AX
Class: M/2 HP
QTH: NJ
Operating Time (hrs): 38
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 101 13 49
80: 211 19 79
40: 521 29 112
20: 705 37 125
15: 1011 33 127
10: 741 34 125
------------------------------
Total: 3290 165 617 Total Score = 7,367,222
Club: Frankford Radio Club
Comments:
A few weeks ago I was dreaming of improving over last year on the hope of
possibly great propagation. However, nothing ever goes exactly the way you
dream about so you make the best of it. With this contest beginning right after
the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, many of us have other plans and commitments and
that makes gathering a team more challenging. Some unforeseeable circumstances
make it even more complex.
Conditions seemed hot on Friday night at the start with an SFI of 194 and single
digit A and K indices. We were 97% S&P that night with only a brief trial
run on 40m to see where we were heard by the skimmers. Saturday seemed to start
well but then the A index shot up to 36 and settled at 38. This made late
Saturday afternoon and evening more challenging and signals were clearly down.
By Sunday this had dropped into the teens and things improved a bit. We had a
good run on 10m Saturday and another one on 15m Sunday. Overall, I’d say 10m
seemed very good but maybe shy of amazing. I always get a kick out of
unexpected DX from a direction other than where the antennas are pointed calling
while I’m running. JH7VHZ called at 2102z (4:02 pm ET) Sunday on 20m while I
was trying to work the last of Europe before the band closed. About 20 minutes
later I realized it was magic time with Japan and the US both on the gray line
so I pointed the antenna to the north and was able to run JAs for a while.
Since it was gray line, signals were coming both short and long path and I was
copying them off both the front and back of the beam at the same time. The echo
effect made copy a little trickier but it was still fun.
On Friday night we realized that our north/south beverage seemed to be a dummy
load. I did some troubleshooting and thought the RG-6 coax was bad. I drove to
Home Depot, bought 500’ of new RG-6, and replaced the entire 350’ run in the
dark just after sunset. Unfortunately, this did not fix the issue. We’ll have
to take a closer look at this before the ARRL contests.
While our score is down vs 2022, it is still better than any previous recent
year by a substantial margin. We did improve our total mult count vs last year
(782 vs 757) which no doubt helped bolster our score some.
Thanks as always to Mark, Donna, and the O’Brien family for the generous loan
of a great station and letting us invade their home for another weekend.
KE2D
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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