2024 CQ WPX CW Contest AK1W (K5ZD)
CQWW WPX Contest, CW - 2024
Call: AK1W
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: W1
Operating Time (hrs): 36
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
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160: 1
80: 105
40: 747
20: 1070
15: 1489
10: 306
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Total: 3718 Prefixes = 1263 Total Score = 14,206,224
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
I have to thank WRTC qualifying for this contest effort. The weather outside was fantastic and I decided to spend the weekend inside chasing prefixes. Luckily my family understands the obsession.
The contest felt like it started slow. Couldn’t get an answer to a CQ for 5 minutes. Even so, it ended up as my best hour of the contest. I was ahead of 8P5A for a while. 🙂
It was a weekend of one radio CQing and the second radio always tuning. Never really had two bands open enough to try 2BSIQ. It was old-fashioned SO2R.
Kept expecting a solar storm of some kind. Only took one hour of off-time in the first 24 hours. Conditions were good, but not great. 10m never really opened the first day. Sat evening did have a good opening to JA on 15m. The JAs saved me. I was 100 prefixes behind ND7K at one point. The JA opening produced a lot of prefixes to help close the gap.
Second 24 hours was more interesting. Had to find times to burn 11 hours off. Conditions just kept getting better. 80m sounded like a winter evening with no QRN and very loud signals from Europe. 20m and 40m were open, but had worked most stations so rates were lower. Felt like activity was down. I.e., not many stations with small QSO numbers.
Slept 4 hours Sunday morning.
Was about to take another hour off Sunday morning when I tuned across 10m and heard S50C about 20 over 9. Called CQ and had a good hour.
Decided on a strategy of taking an hour or so off and then getting on for an hour. Gave me time to take a walk during one off time. Eat during another. And a shower. Ran out of time with 90 minutes of the contest still to go.
Even better opening to Japan on 15m on Sunday afternoon. Had both Eu and JA calling at the same time.
Highlight of the weekend was having the serious USA single ops on the Contestonlinescoreboard.com site. I was neck and neck with N6MJ at ND7K the whole weekend. Fantastic motivation. I could not match Dan for QSOs, but tried to hang in on multipliers. I realized I had a QSO point advantage when my score was higher even when he had 400 more QSOs and 30 more mults. Nice to be close enough to Europe to get them on the low bands. Also fun to watch the N2IC and K5GN battle for top W5.
The QSB was brutal. Stations would send 599 loud and then disappear by the last digit of the serial number. The polar flutter on JA stations would eliminate the dit from a letter. This happened many times. Thanks to SCP or would not have known I had the call wrong.
Serial numbers were a real frustration on Sunday. Whether it was having to ask for repeats or giving them. It seemed like the bigger the number got, the harder it was for people to copy. It became a joy to send the number and have it accepted on the first try.
Only one equipment failure. The SO2R controller started randomly switching split headphones back to combined. Then it would not switch back until the transmitting radio stopped. Very frustrating when about to copy a serial number. The problem started Sat evening and then mysteriously stopped on Sunday early. Then came back for awhile Sunday afternoon. Not sure how to duplicate this, but had never seen it happen before.
This was a personal best for me in WPX CW. Just a bit short of the USA record set by WA1Z a few years ago.
Thanks to everyone that got on for the contest and produced so many interesting prefixes! You don’t work calls like AO275JZ or DM5041MK every day.
Station
K3 + AL-1200 K3 + AL-1500 160m: 1/4-wave GP, shunt fed tower 80m: 4 square, dipole 40m: 2/2 @ 110’/70′ 20m: 5/5 @ 100’/50′ 15m: 5/5 @ 66’/33′ 10m: 6/4/4 @ 100’/65’/30′ 10-20m: C31xr @ 40′
By Continent
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
EU 0 57 447 689 975 189 2357 63.4
NA 1 45 271 246 270 43 876 23.6
AF 0 2 8 13 10 11 44 1.2
AS 0 0 5 82 183 3 273 7.3
SA 0 1 12 22 25 50 110 3.0
OC 0 0 4 18 25 10 57 1.5
Rates
QSO/Pref by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm Off
0000Z --+-- --+-- 112/95 46/43 --+-- --+-- 158/138 158/138
0100Z - - 102/72 44/35 - - 146/107 304/245
0200Z - - 98/59 30/18 5/3 - 133/80 437/325
0300Z - 8/4 97/58 - 14/14 - 119/76 556/401
0400Z - 9/4 84/33 17/12 - - 110/49 666/450
0500Z - - 64/32 44/22 - - 108/54 774/504
0600Z - - 9/5 137/40 - - 146/45 920/549
0700Z - - 15/9 90/33 - - 105/42 1025/591
0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 54/28 21/7 --+-- 75/35 1100/626
0900Z - - - 17/14 115/17 - 132/31 1232/657
1000Z - - - 16/14 132/28 - 148/42 1380/699
1100Z - - - 19/13 115/35 - 134/48 1514/747
1200Z - - - 4/4 103/21 22/8 129/33 1643/780
1300Z - - - - 107/22 17/6 124/28 1767/808
1400Z - - - - 87/22 13/8 100/30 1867/838
1500Z - - - - 66/54 - 66/54 1933/892
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 3/3 54/23 11/7 68/33 2001/925
1700Z - - - 15/6 23/7 - 38/13 2039/938 15
1800Z - - - - - - 0/0 2039/938 60
1900Z - - - 18/1 32/2 - 50/3 2089/941 32
2000Z - - - 40/9 49/7 5/3 94/19 2183/960
2100Z - - - - 79/22 27/9 106/31 2289/991
2200Z - - - 25/5 71/23 1/0 97/28 2386/1019
2300Z - - 20/10 22/6 45/14 - 87/30 2473/1049
0000Z --+-- --+-- 9/3 88/13 9/4 --+-- 106/20 2579/1069
0100Z - - 44/6 55/15 - - 99/21 2678/1090
0200Z - 55/1 17/9 7/5 3/3 - 82/18 2760/1108
0300Z 1/0 33/4 55/6 4/0 - - 93/10 2853/1118
0400Z - - 9/4 7/2 3/1 - 19/7 2872/1125 39
0500Z - - - - - - 0/0 2872/1125 60
0600Z - - - - - - 0/0 2872/1125 60
0700Z - - - - - - 0/0 2872/1125 60
0800Z --+-- --+-- 1/0 19/3 --+-- --+-- 20/3 2892/1128 50
0900Z - - 1/0 91/10 14/1 - 106/11 2998/1139
1000Z - - - 67/11 23/4 - 90/15 3088/1154
1100Z - - 8/2 13/2 56/15 2/0 79/19 3167/1173
1200Z - - 1/1 5/2 79/10 4/2 89/15 3256/1188
1300Z - - - - 27/6 79/5 106/11 3362/1199
1400Z - - - - 8/2 24/4 32/6 3394/1205 33
1500Z - - - - - - 0/0 3394/1205 60
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 28/7 66/3 94/10 3488/1215 9
1700Z - - - - 9/2 26/2 35/4 3523/1219 35
1800Z - - - - 15/2 7/1 22/3 3545/1222 43
1900Z - - - 19/5 25/8 - 44/13 3589/1235 8
2000Z - - - 1/1 2/2 - 3/3 3592/1238 60
2100Z - - 1/1 28/3 56/12 2/2 87/18 3679/1256
2200Z - - - 25/1 14/6 - 39/7 3718/1263 35
2300Z - - - - - - 0/0 3718/1263 60
Total: 1/0 105/13 747/405 1070/379 1489/406 306/60
Best 60 mins: 164 @25-May-2024 00:02
Worked on 5 bands:
9A1A AK1MD CN3A CR6K DL3YM DP6A DP7D DP9A EF6T II8K II9P K1ZZ K8LX LZ9W NR4M OL3Z OL7D OM7M S53M VE3EJ YR8D YT5A
Most worked entities
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
K 1 34 235 210 222 28 730
DL 11 80 97 166 46 400
JA 50 113 163
UA 23 53 93 6 175
I 4 26 46 62 13 151
G 3 19 34 49 17 122
OK 5 28 38 38 4 113
EA 5 12 35 41 12 105
HA 1 27 36 34 4 102
UR 22 31 47 1 101
SP 1 28 24 41 4 98