CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2020
Call: KQ2M
Operator(s): KQ2M
Station: KQ2M
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 27.3
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 12
40: 917
20: 1231
15: 454
10: 4
------------
Total: 2618 Prefixes = 948 Total Score = 7,143,180
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Have you ever had one of those contests where almost everything that can go
wrong, does goes wrong? Normally I am pretty lucky, but this time it was
definitely " catch up " for all those contests when I didn't have a
major problem.
By getting only 4 -5 hours of sleep per night for the three weeks before the
contest it was already a " set up " for the problems to come and
guaranteeing that my back spasms wouldn't be finished. On Wednesday before the
contest a storm came through and finished off most of my low band wire antennas.
160 was broken and no time to fix it. The 80 meter 4-square was fixed in a
drenching mist on Thursday along with throwing a heavy 502 insulator with a rope
attached, into the tree and pulling up the 40 meter wire beam director to only
25'. Afterwards I had to ice down my back from the wrenching of the throwing
motion. There was no chance to use the slingshot as everything was soaking wet
and the ground had sodden debris everywhere. The 40 meter 4-square was beyond
hope. Fortunately the 10 - 20 yagis looked okay.
My plan had been to set up and reconnect the station after 5 PM on Friday when
hopefully everything would work. But that plan got blown out by the rounds of
thunderstorms that we were expecting. It made no sense to hook up everything at
5 PM only to disconnect it all at 7 PM and then reconnect it again after that.
Since the first line of thunderstorms was expected right at 0000z, I realized
that I would have no chance to operate Friday night when the best rates were to
be had. UGH !
The Thunderstorms came as promised, starting at 2355z, and the lines of cells
were to keep coming until about 07z. Nothing to do except eat dinner and go to
sleep.
I woke up at 08z in a stupor and went downstairs to the shack and connected
everything. By 09z I was finished and made my food for the day and came down
to operate. 20 was almost dead. 40 was very poor and 80 was odd. There seemed
to be no pattern to the 4-square and signals were equally strong in all
directions. I had seen this before and it was bad news. I had missed the
entirety of Friday evening high rate operating and there was nothing that I can
do but wait for 20 to open. And 20 didn't seem to want to open. I checked
spaceweather.com and found out why - a massive M1 Solar Flare had just hit and
the solar wind of 374.2 kph with 15.5 protons !!! The 15.5 protons was the
highest that I had ever seen - and was like a wet blanket on signals.
I started cqing @ 0924z and was mostly not heard on 20. I went to 40 and tried
to work a few stations but had difficulty - I was not being heard there either
as it was hard to be heard to the West with a wire beam pointed at Europe. Back
to to 20 @ 0943 with slightly better luck - working about one station per minute
and cndx were still quite poor. But then at 0959z a LOUD JP7DKQ called in - the
only JA I would work that morning. I turned the top antenna to JA - NOTHING. I
turned it back to EU and resumed trying to run. The rates never got above a
pitiful 85 per hour. And then the qrm started. First KV2K tried repeatedly to
hijack my run freq. and would not go away; then RA5G was next - qrming me for
another 20 minutes. Cndx and rates were so poor that I qrt'd at the time when
EU and Russian should have been very loud with great rates. I was so tired that
I came upstairs and went to bed after just 170 qso's! To make matters worse, my
Right radio ACOM2000A apparently had an issue with heater current. I hoped that
it would make it through the contest.
I woke up about 17z and ate lunch. By now the bands should have started
improving but I had lost my motivation. At 18z I went downstairs to the shack
and decided to test the 80 meter 4 - square again. There was no doubt about it
- no directional pattern. One of the elements must have broken which was
frustrating because I had inspected it on Thursday afternoon and everything
appeared fine. At 1854z I listened around on 15 and 10 - 15 seemed to have some
loud signals to EU and US but not much volume. What was strange though was the
few SW loud EU stations did not seem to peak on any particular antenna, or
stacking combo. That was very unusual. I called a few cq 's with no reply.
Not wanting to waste any more time, I cq ' ed on 20 and had a pileup of loud
stations. GOOD! Finally some rate - 131 each for the 19 and 20 z hours - not
great but good. I briefly listened on the 2nd radio to 15 and 10 and noticed
that still no difference between antennas pattern for the US or EU signals which
did not make any sense. In the middle of all this, the Right radio computer
crashed twice about 15 minutes apart - and each time I had to write the calls
and qso info down on paper and then type it into the computer when it came back
up. While I was doing this I accidentally knocked into the (Bencher) paddle and
dislodged the spring and paddle from where it was connected. This resulted in a
series of unintelligble code for about 30 seconds, the loss of a qso and pileup
and the inescapable conclusion that my station was " Out to get me !
". Naturally at least two Eastern EU multi - stations took advantage of
this brief spastic code episode to begin cqing on top of me. It was all getting
more and more bizarre ! After securing the keyer and eventually driving both of
them away, I resumed my run on 20. Being " Fresh meat " has it 's
advantages but giving out an extremely low serial number at 20z had the effect
of causing many stations to ask for a repeat - they must have been thinking that
surely I must have meant qso number 1411 instead of 411 ?
By now signals had gotten really loud on 15 and I though that I should try to
run there , even with antennas with no pattern. I had some modest rate with a
few EU stations calling in , but with 15 being my best band and stations this
loud and having some trouble running them, something was clearly wrong. Even
more baffling was when I was listening on the 10 meter antennas and when
switching them on radio 2 the amp would click off on radio 1. This was just too
bizarre. So 10 and 15 weren't working properly, on 40 meters I only had a wire
beam up 30 ', a patternless 80 meter 4-square and no 160. That meant I had ONE
band that seemed to work - 20 meters.
I had listened on the second radio on 10 and 15 while making qsos on 20 but
didn't bother to call anyone on the 2nd radio. I was tired and discouraged and
had little interest at this point in doing anything other than running. So I
ran on 20 and then, having made ZERO qso 's on 40 and 80 the first night, I
figured that I better go there NOW and stay as late as possible even though that
meant I would miss any Asians / Pacific and US West Coast on 20. It was a hard
choice - but I had no choice.
I went to 40 at 2119z and had a good run for the next 8 hours - about 940 qso 's
of which 12 were on 80 and 2 on 20. The brief interlude came at 0115z on 80 -
signals were not very loud from W and EU, but when I called cq I should have had
a good run. Instead almost nothing - signals were equally loud regardless of
direction. I was wasting my time and I knew it - back to 40. Somehow, over the
next few hours until 0559z when I went qrt, I managed to hang in there despite
the almost constant heart arrhythmias that continued unabated for most of that
time making me feel lightheaded and sick. Just as I was about to qrt I checked
propagation on 20 with the second radio and was amazed to hear an S9 JP2DKW
peaking at 51 degrees instead of the normal 335 degrees - but he was one of the
few stations that I heard. A few hours earlier there were some REALLY loud EU
and US stations on 20 and I felt bad missing them while on 40 but I had no
choice really - I had missed the first night on 40 and I could not miss the
second night as well. I felt a little better now but still it was hard fighting
poor propagation with antenna problems on 5 bands out of 6 !
I decided to get up earlier on Sunday to get an earlier start on the 20 meter
run, but cndx were even worse. UGH !. Rates were pitiful even though I had made
only 350 qso's on 20 so far. Cndx were just awful and no one was hearing me. I
continued to call cq and hear EU stations cqing in my face.
Oddly enough though I did hear LB4UH on 15 @ an extremely early 0955 z ! This
was a very good sign and was confirmed by spaceweather.com showing that the Bz
was +2.5 meaning that the Earth's magnetic field was no longer Southward facing
- and that cndx were improving - also noted by the fact that the proton number
had fallen from 15.5 to 4.5 - a HUGE improvement. The rates on 20 were so poor
that it was an easy choice to jump to 15 even though it again meant that I had
to miss the 20 meter JA / Asian opening.
Once on 15 it was clear that something was wrong with the 15 meter array - EU
stations and US stations were pattern-less. No way that should happen.
I started listening on 10 meters again and noticed that every time I switched
the 10 meter antennas then ACOM2000A would kick off on 15. I had just about HAD
IT with my station. I was so angry and frustrated by now that I grabbed the 10
meter switchbox and then 15 meters went dead. HUH ? Then OMG ! I looked at
the back of the 10 meter box ( I had color coded all boxes by band ) and then
had a sickening realization - the 10 meter switch box was on 15 and the 15 meter
switch box was on 10. Apparently while hooking up my station at 4 AM on
Saturday while I was half blind from the " gunk " in my eyes, I did
not realize that I had connected the wrong colors cable to each of the antenna
switch boxes! D*MN IT! I had obliterated sensational 10 and 15 meter openings
on Saturday by hooking up the wrong antenna switch box to the wrong band - and
what was worse, had the antennas in the wrong direction - SW on 15 and NE on 10;
the exact opposite of what I would have wanted.
Well with that figured and the correct antenna switch boxes connected to the
correct band, 15 meters finally began to work properly. I had two good hours on
15 at 12 and 13z Sunday with 109 and 116 qso's and loads of EU stations, but it
was SUNDAY and many stations had already used up almost all of their operating
time so even though the bands were open the stations weren't on. 15 meters
petered out by ~ 14z when 10 meters opened up to EU short skip. It was a
remarkable opening with spotlight propagation. There were two LOUD SP stations
and two loud Russians - all easily workable and all S9. And that was it from
EU. No other EU stations !! I went back to 15 and immediately heard a loud
broad - band swooshing sound which apparently was being heard in EU as well. I
bounced back and forth between 15 and 20 bu the rates were mediocre 60 - 80 per
hours for the next four hours until 20 really opened well about 19z resulting in
112 , 101 and 93 qso 's over the next three hours. And that was despite the
horrendous key clicks of RL3A that obliterated a full 1 kc of the band and
making it impossible to copy stations at times. Since I had made 900 + qso 's
Saturday night on 40 with zero on 20, I decided to operate 20 straight through
to the end hoping to catch any JA and Asian stations even though it was Monday
morning in Asia. Sadly I worked only a few JA and Asian stations but I did also
work a lot of EU and US prefixes so that was a good trade.
Cndx were excellent on 20 at the end, no doubt this is how they were at the
start on Friday evening when I couldn't operate or even hook up my station.
I had a huge weather related problem at the start, had had all kinds of antenna
and stations problems (with essentially only three bands) , and then I had made
a colossal station setup error; yet with all of that and basically only
operating one radio all weekend, I was pleased that I had still managed to make
a 7.1 meg score in 27 hours.
As I thought about what had happened and what bands I couldn't use during what
appeared to be very good or excellent propagation for most of the weekend, I
believe that a rested version of me operating SO2R for all 36 hours, with all
antennas working and connected to the right bands could have made 11 - 12 meg
this contest.
One of the interesting things about WPXCW is that score increases become almost
exponential at the end, especially when working a 6 point qso that is a new
mult. At the end of 18 hours that qso might be worth 10 k pts. But at the end
of 36 hours that same qso and mult could be worth 18 - 22 k pts ! so a
disproportionate part of the score is made in the last 8 - 12 hours of
operating.
After the contest some people had mentioned that they thought the 10 and 15
meter openings on Saturday were some of the best that they had ever experienced
in this contest. Unfortunately that is when I had the wrong antenna relay boxes
connected to each band and with the antennas in exactly the wrong directions.
On Monday evening I discovered that in fact one of the elements of the 80 meter
4 - square had broken between Thursday evening and Saturday morning - likely
during the winds of the thunderstorms; which resulted in no pattern.
It was a bad weekend for my antennas, my station and my body, but I still had a
lot of fun. That's why I get on for WPXCW every year that I can. You just
never know what is going to happen ! As always it was a pleasure to say hello to
old friends and to renew my acquaintance with cw - I am usually relearning how
to use my Bencher paddle in the first few hours of the WPXCW - the first cw that
I have operated since ARRLDXCW !
Thanks for all the qso's and mults! Stay safe and I hope to see you all in IARU
if possible.
73
Bob , KQ2M
kq2m@kq2m.com
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