ARRL 10-Meter Contest - 2023
Call: KT4XA
Operator(s): NV4B K4CNY
Station: NV4B
Class: M/S LP
QTH: Alabama
Operating Time (hrs): 22:42
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 477 122
SSB: 248 86
-------------------
Total: 725 208 Total Score = 500,032
Club: Alabama Contest Group
Comments:
(de NV4B): I'd always wondered what an ARRL 10m Contest with only F2
propagation would be like. This is probably as close as we'll get -- there was
some brief Es to CO and to the Maritimes and northernmost reaches of W1, but for
the most part, the E-layer MUF didn't get much above 28 MHz from northwest
Alabama. F2 was good, however, and better on Sunday than Saturday. Once again,
I heard echoes of my own signal via backscatter around midday on Sunday, and
quite a few states and stations were worked via this propagation mode, but
by-and-large, the eastern half of the U.S. is very scarce in our log.
Propagation was good to EU and AF, although participation was seriously lacking.
It's clear that this is somewhat of a niche event for DX compared to, say,
CQWW, which is unfortunate, because the propagation was there. The openings to
JA were brief, and I missed out on a very narrow window to work JA on SSB Sunday
evening. No BYs or other AS stations were heard here. The band died about an
hour after sunset each night, including Friday night when the contest started.
Desperation set in Sunday evening in the 23Z hour as we raced to hit the 500K
point mark. The band died almost completely around 2330Z while we were still
two CW QSOs shy of the desired mark. Two QSOs with CA -- one at 2340 and
another at 2344Z -- put us over the top, barely. No doubt it will be lost in
log checking.
One unexpected consequence of the lack of Es was the inability to get an
appreciable rate while running. Our best CW run was 51 QSOs at about a 50/hr
rate. This seemed quite odd to me despite us running low power to a high
omnidirectional antenna -- this setup has been effective in many previous
contests. Only 37% of our QSOs were the product of a run. K4CNY fared a bit
better on phone Sunday afternoon, surprisingly, given SSB activity levels as of
late. SSB activity seemed to be up a bit, perhaps, this year, and SSB QSOs were
a significantly larger fraction of our total compared to 2022.
We used diversity reception on the ICOM IC-7610 with a horizontal antenna
(inverted-V) used as the receiving antenna. As others have noted, there was
frequent and deep QSB, but that was mitigated for us in many instances with the
diversity reception configuration. Apologies to those several for whom neither
antenna permitted us to pull you out of the noise.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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