2010 CQ WW CW Contest K5ZD
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW Call: K5ZD Operator(s): K5ZD Station: K5ZD Class: SOAB HP QTH: W1 Operating Time (hrs): 42 Radios: SO2R Summary: Band QSOs Zones Countries ------------------------------ 160: 163 15 57 80: 725 24 90 40: 1359 35 114 20: 1209 35 122 15: 1077 29 106 10: 76 16 35 ------------------------------ Total: 4609 154 524 Total Score = 9,117,066 Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
Wow, who would have expected a score like this with the conditions predicted for the weekend?!
Had planned a casual effort, but the activity and conditions were addicting! Once I started, I just couldn’t stop operating. Luckily my family is familiar with this addiction and knew to just ignore me until the contest was over.
Highlights
The low bands were great. Knew it was going to be good when I called Europeans on 160m and they could hear me on the first call. No QRN here in the USA or Europe really helps the scores.
Conditions on Saturday morning. I woke up around 1130z and did some low band DXing. As I was finishing on 40m I moved the second radio from 80m to 15m. Whoa! The band was filled with booming signals. My first CQ at 1156z resulted in 201 QSOs in the next 60 minutes. I completely skipped 20m for the morning.
40m on both afternoons. No matter how many times I do WWCW from here I can’t get used to going to 40m when the sun is still up. Got there at 21z on Saturday and had 4 fantastic (100+) hours in a row on the same frequency. A little earlier on Sunday and almost the same result. Thus the big 40m QSO total.
80m Saturday night. I slept for two hours between 02-04z. Worked some DX on 160m and then found 3506 available. Had 3 hours straight of great rate (until ED9M decided it was his frequency). I don’t have the loudest signal on 80m so it was really nice to get so many QSOs. Definitely helped the score.
10 meters. Worked *one* European. Worked ST2AR for the only zone 34 heard all weekend!
Elecraft K3. This radio has the best receiver. It would have been impossible to hear so many of the weak stations, especially on 40 and 80, without it.
Russians and Eastern Europe. Fantastic activity from this area on all bands. I love the new Russian callsigns. Some of them reminded me of prefixes from long ago. UD, UC, RJ, etc.
USA record? The old USA record was from the year 2000 (8.7M with 4484/161/531) and included 1189 QSOs on 10m! The difference this year was the balance across all bands. A rare occurrence.
Lowlights
SO2R. Had 208 second radio QSOs. Rate was so high I had almost no time to work on the second radio. 🙁
Not operating full time. Since I had not planned a serious effort, I did not do any special preparation for food or sleep. Also spent much time the first night DXing. It was only at the halfway point that I realized the score was special and I should be more serious. The second day was full attention and motivation!
People who don’t send their call enough. I think I complain about this every year. The increase in DX Cluster (and skimmer) use keeps making it worse. Part of the challenge of single op.
Thanks to everyone who make this contest so much fun!
Station
Radio 1 K3 + Alpha 76CA
Radio 2 FT1000D + Ameritron AL-1200
Tower 1
40-2CD @ 110′
205CA stack at 100’/50′
155CA stack at 66’/33′
160m Ground Plane hanging from tower
Tower 2
6-el 10m @ 90′
80m 4 square wires hanging from tower
Shunt fed for 160m
Tower 3
TH7DXX @ 40′ (always pointing South)
By Continent
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
EU 111 627 1190 1022 964 2 3916 85.0
AF 4 12 20 25 18 11 90 2.0
AS 3 15 46 66 11 0 141 3.1
NA 41 58 65 56 38 22 280 6.1
SA 4 7 19 32 35 41 138 3.0
OC 0 6 19 8 11 0 44 1.0
Rates
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm Off 0000Z --+-- --+-- 79/47 --+-- --+-- --+-- 79/47 79/47 0100Z 10/13 - 61/25 5/4 - - 76/42 155/89 0200Z 15/8 60/42 - - - - 75/50 230/139 0300Z - 106/22 - 6/8 - - 112/30 342/169 0400Z 15/9 43/6 - 2/3 - - 60/18 402/187 18 0500Z 50/14 - 11/6 1/2 - - 62/22 464/209 0600Z 1/2 - 150/10 - - - 151/12 615/221 0700Z 13/6 79/4 5/1 - - - 97/11 712/232 0800Z --+-- 33/15 28/5 --+-- --+-- --+-- 61/20 773/252 0900Z - 6/5 23/8 - - - 29/13 802/265 37 1000Z 2/1 2/0 31/1 - - - 35/2 837/267 36 1100Z - 4/3 13/6 - 8/8 - 25/17 862/284 31 1200Z - - - - 196/36 - 196/36 1058/320 1300Z - - - - 154/5 5/8 159/13 1217/333 1400Z - - - - 133/13 6/9 139/22 1356/355 1500Z - - - 179/44 7/0 1/1 187/45 1543/400 1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 172/9 4/4 --+-- 176/13 1719/413 1700Z - - - 128/10 16/8 - 144/18 1863/431 1800Z - - - 37/3 15/16 8/5 60/24 1923/455 25 1900Z - - - 51/24 18/13 - 69/37 1992/492 2000Z - - 2/2 19/9 17/10 2/0 40/21 2032/513 2100Z - - 133/2 - 1/0 - 134/2 2166/515 2200Z - - 137/4 6/2 - - 143/6 2309/521 2300Z - - 104/2 18/12 - - 122/14 2431/535 0000Z --+-- 16/3 101/5 3/2 --+-- --+-- 120/10 2551/545 0100Z 3/3 26/1 12/0 1/1 - - 42/5 2593/550 24 0200Z - - - - - - 0/0 2593/550 60 0300Z 4/3 - - - - - 4/3 2597/553 56 0400Z 28/7 51/2 - - - - 79/9 2676/562 0500Z 1/0 104/1 13/4 - - - 118/5 2794/567 0600Z 17/4 93/0 2/2 - - - 112/6 2906/573 0700Z 3/1 53/1 41/2 - - - 97/4 3003/577 0800Z --+-- 2/2 103/0 --+-- --+-- --+-- 105/2 3108/579 0900Z 1/1 2/2 51/7 - - - 54/10 3162/589 3 1000Z - 4/2 - - - - 4/2 3166/591 60 1100Z - - 12/5 77/2 1/0 - 90/7 3256/598 1200Z - - - 170/3 6/0 - 176/3 3432/601 1300Z - - - 56/2 118/1 - 174/3 3606/604 1400Z - - - 4/0 172/7 - 176/7 3782/611 1500Z - - - 7/4 117/3 7/8 131/15 3913/626 1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 66/4 19/13 85/17 3998/643 1700Z - - - 89/2 9/1 3/1 101/4 4099/647 1800Z - - - 84/5 2/1 8/2 94/8 4193/655 1900Z - - - 64/4 6/2 12/2 82/8 4275/663 2000Z - - 57/0 8/0 2/0 5/2 72/2 4347/665 24 2100Z - - 125/4 - 9/3 - 134/7 4481/672 2200Z - - 63/1 22/2 - - 85/3 4566/675 2300Z - 41/3 2/0 - - - 43/3 4609/678 Tot: 163/72 725/114 1359/149 1209/157 1077/135 76/51
Stations worked on 6 bands:
9L5VT CR2X DQ4W P40C PJ2T PJ4A VP2E/K1XM ZF1A
Best 60 minutes: 204 (a new personal record for CW)