2022 ARRL Sweepstakes CW K5ZD
Call: K5ZD Operator(s): K5ZD Station: K5ZD Class: Single Op HP QTH: MA Operating Time (hrs): 20.4 OpMode: SO2R Summary: Band QSOs ------------ 160: 0 80: 307 40: 180 20: 308 15: 273 10: 43 ------------ Total: 1111 Sections = 84 Total Score = 186,648 Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
My 46th consecutive year of more than 1000 QSOs in Sweepstakes CW.
After 10,000 QSOs last weekend from V4 (contest + playing around) and late return home on Tue night, I struggled to get motivated for this contest. I reassembled my station on Sat morning and decided I would see how it went.
The first 3 hours were great. Maybe best ever.
Not sure what happened to 40m. 10-20 were great, but 40 was long well before I got there. Retreated to 80 and it was good. The band was quiet and long.
But, by 0300z, I could tell the activity was not high enough to avoid the grind. By 0500z I was dragging so I decided to break early and go for a longer period of sleep than usual. (I remember years ago when you almost had to do the first 12 hours solid to be competitive.)
Rates were not better in the morning. Everyone on the live scoreboard seemed to be locked into a slow-motion rate of about 30 per hour. I decided to go for my goal of making 1000 QSOs and call it good.
Easy clean sweep. Had the hard ones out of the way early. Just needed NL and found VO1BQ on 20m Sunday morning. Always a relief to get that one out of the way. Last California section was LAX. Would never have expected that!
Mission accomplished. I ended on a round number of 1111 QSOs with 2 hours still to go.
Was entertaining to watch the scoreboard as AA3B raced off to a big lead and then N2NC @ N2NT slowly reeled him in. Even when I was pushing at my hardest it seemed that NC would make 1-3 more QSOs per hour than I did.
Rates
QSO/Sec by hour and band
Hour 80 40 20 15 10 Total Cumm Off
2100Z - - 19/18 61/30 10/3 90/51 90/51
2200Z - - 10/2 89/10 4/1 103/13 193/64
2300Z - - 50/3 40/3 - 90/6 283/70
0000Z --+-- 20/1 52/3 --+-- --+-- 72/4 355/74
0100Z 52/4 16/0 13/0 - - 81/4 436/78
0200Z 83/2 6/2 - - - 89/4 525/82
0300Z 49/0 11/0 - - - 60/0 585/82
0400Z 49/0 4/1 - - - 53/1 638/83
0500Z 29/0 18/0 - - - 47/0 685/83
0600Z 6/0 - - - - 6/0 691/83 48
0700Z - - - - - 0/0 691/83 60
0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 691/83 60
0900Z - - - - - 0/0 691/83 60
1000Z 1/0 - - - - 1/0 692/83 58
1100Z 20/0 18/0 - - - 38/0 730/83
1200Z 9/0 27/0 2/1 - - 38/1 768/84
1300Z - 16/0 22/0 - - 38/0 806/84
1400Z - 6/0 37/0 - - 43/0 849/84
1500Z - 9/0 20/0 4/0 - 33/0 882/84
1600Z --+-- --+-- 24/0 11/0 --+-- 35/0 917/84
1700Z - - 31/0 14/0 - 45/0 962/84
1800Z - - 2/0 3/0 - 5/0 967/84 53
1900Z - - 4/0 23/0 13/0 40/0 1007/84 7
2000Z - - - 8/0 11/0 19/0 1026/84 3
2100Z - - 1/0 13/0 5/0 19/0 1045/84 60
2200Z - 16/0 13/0 4/0 - 33/0 1078/84
2300Z - 7/0 2/0 3/0 - 12/0 1090/84 41
0000Z 8/0 4/0 6/0 --+-- --+-- 18/0 1108/84 18
0100Z 1/0 2/0 - - - 3/0 1111/84 52
0200Z - - - - - 0/0 1111/84 60
Total: 307/6 180/4 308/27 273/43 43/4