2025 ARRL DX Contest CW K5ZD
ARRL DX Contest, CW - 2025
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SOUAB HP
QTH: W1
Operating Time (hrs): 41.4
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 109 46
80: 540 77
40: 1114 96
20: 1161 114
15: 1283 115
10: 1071 114
-------------------
Total: 5278 562 Total Score = 8,898,708
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
This was my final ARRL DX CW from this QTH. It has been a great 32-year run, and it is nice to end on a high note. With nothing to prove, I opted for the fun factor and decided to work assisted.
Got off to a good start. I made it to 160 about 0310z and found some loud European signals that were easy to work. About 10 minutes later, some electronic noise began. This has been occurring for several years. I suspect it is something related to a neighbor’s heating system. The electronic buzz/hash is S7 across 160. Doesn’t affect the other bands. That kind of broke my mental lock on the contest. I returned to the high bands and hoped it might go away later.
Plenty of good rates on 40 and 80. 40 was excellent in the hours after Europe sunrise. I finally decided to take a short sleep break when things began to slow down. Back on at 10z and 20m was already open.
Rates were fast and furious the next few hours. I had seen predictions that things might be disturbed on Saturday and improve on Sunday so I was not surprised to see 10m open slowly.
Signals on 10m were workable beaming south or east from the normal opening time, but didn’t feel runnable. And certainly not as good as 15m was doing. I decided to stay committed to 15m since the rate was so good. I did get two good hours on 10m starting around 15z.
First mental health and food break at 20z. I really needed that after the mental drain of high rate zero beat non-stop calling Europe pileups. Came back from that on to 40 meters. It was a bit early, but Eu signals were good, and being early meant getting a good frequency. Was able to stay on 40 until almost 00z.
Line score at the halfway point:
53/37 375/68 853/90 623/95 822/99 502/93 3228/482 = 4,667,688 points
At 00z I did something I had never done before. I stopped operating, grabbed a bite to eat, and then went to sleep for 3 hours. I woke up with a much better mental attitude and chased the sunrise across Europe.
Started calling CQ on 160m at 0520z. The electronic hash was off so I could hear well (except for the static crashes). Had a nice “run” of Europeans until 0615z. Even worked some 5W stations!
80 and 40 were very open to Europe, but not much rate. I think the activity was limited so we just ran out of stations to work. Noticed the multi-multi stations couldn’t get much over 2000 QSOs on any band so that is probably a good indication of the available population of stations to work.
About this time the snow changed over to rain and there was some rain static. It was especially noticeable on 40 and 20. Even though I was awake, I decided 90 more minutes of sleep wouldn’t hurt. Back on at 10z to find a wide open 20 meters. I was low on 20m QSOs so stayed on the band a bit longer while listening to 15 open. Made the jump at 1120z (my sunrise is 1154z!). Started CQing on 10m at 1213z and there was an instant pileup.
Propagation was strange. Some big signals from Russia. Weak from OH/SM. Loud from Italy. Mid to weak from Germany and Poland. Then it would reverse that.
During the morning I would check 20m. The band was incredibly open to Japan and Asia. I have never heard KH0W so loud! But, not much volume so mostly second radio work. Back to 15m around 1545z. That enabled me to do some S&P on 10m with the second radio.
I usually have the spot window set to only show multipliers. At this point, it just had a few and the game was to balance chasing pileups without losing the run frequency. Got lucky on a bunch of them. It helps to call a bit off frequency…
It got slow enough that I started trying to CQ on two bands. Almost every time I did it, I turned into a total lid within a few minutes. I finally started to figure it out, but I still don’t see how these guys do it for hours at a time.
It was nice to be called by HS0ZLN on 20m during the afternoon. Even more surprising to have him call me a few minutes later on 15m.
The rest of the contest was just a matter of waiting for Europeans to turn on their radio and call in. When I saw a spot for V85RH on 40m, I almost skipped it. But, things were slow so I checked it out. Wow! He was 20 over 9 on long path. Easy QSO!
The last hour was just chasing anything that moved. I had some decent rate on 80m. The band was good, just not much activity. But, it was a band with new people.
I watched the online scoreboard all weekend. I set it in the mode that combines all single ops (assisted and unassisted) into one list. I spent a lot of the weekend chasing AA3B and K1ZZ for multipliers and N2NT for QSOs. N2NT gained a lead during my sleep breaks and I could never close it down. I knew K1ZZ was doing his DXer thing so it provided a good indication of what was possible. With a lot of luck (like UN9L calling in on 80m) I was able to almost catch up.
I can’t imagine I would have put in this much operating time if not for the fun of chasing on the scoreboard.
ARRL DX SSB is the one more contest left from here. Not sure I can devote this much energy to SSB but have to do it.
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′
Rates
QSO/DX by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm Off
0000Z --+-- --+-- 161/37 21/16 --+-- --+-- 182/53 182/53
0100Z - 90/25 57/4 4/3 13/13 - 164/45 346/98
0200Z 12/9 78/15 32/11 - - - 122/35 468/133
0300Z 13/11 3/2 23/14 38/21 - - 77/48 545/181
0400Z 7/2 41/14 54/5 - - - 102/21 647/202
0500Z 10/7 42/2 97/3 4/1 - - 153/13 800/215
0600Z 8/5 83/7 14/3 - - - 105/15 905/230
0700Z 1/1 5/1 90/5 15/3 - - 111/10 1016/240
0800Z 1/1 --+-- 49/2 1/1 --+-- --+-- 51/4 1067/244 26
0900Z - - - - - - 0/0 1067/244 60
1000Z 1/1 - 1/1 146/22 - - 148/24 1215/268 5
1100Z - - - 63/4 140/32 - 203/36 1418/304
1200Z - - - 7/4 205/15 9/8 221/27 1639/331
1300Z - - - 10/3 187/6 19/15 216/24 1855/355
1400Z - - - - 138/1 60/30 198/31 2053/386
1500Z - - - - 8/8 204/7 212/15 2265/401
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 22/4 153/12 175/16 2440/417
1700Z - - - 77/3 52/5 8/5 137/13 2577/430
1800Z - - - 123/5 5/2 12/8 140/15 2717/445
1900Z - - - 96/1 9/5 10/3 115/9 2832/454
2000Z - - 50/1 2/1 7/3 - 59/5 2891/459 29
2100Z - - 108/3 5/1 9/1 15/2 137/7 3028/466
2200Z - - 71/1 4/3 25/3 12/3 112/10 3140/476
2300Z - 33/2 46/0 7/3 1/1 - 87/6 3227/482
0000Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 1/0 --+-- 1/0 3228/482 59
0100Z - - - - - - 0/0 3228/482 60
0200Z - - - - - - 0/0 3228/482 60
0300Z - 32/5 7/1 8/3 1/0 - 48/9 3276/491 27
0400Z 3/1 33/1 38/2 - - - 74/4 3350/495
0500Z 33/5 - 43/1 2/0 - - 78/6 3428/501
0600Z 16/0 43/0 5/0 1/0 - - 65/0 3493/501
0700Z 3/2 2/1 63/1 8/0 - - 76/4 3569/505
0800Z --+-- --+-- 1/0 15/0 --+-- --+-- 16/0 3585/505 46
0900Z - 1/1 2/0 - - - 3/1 3588/506 57
1000Z - - 1/0 159/2 - - 160/2 3748/508
1100Z - - - 65/2 110/0 - 175/2 3923/510
1200Z - - - - 29/1 141/7 170/8 4093/518
1300Z - - - 17/2 3/2 145/5 165/9 4258/527
1400Z - - - 3/2 7/2 155/4 165/8 4423/535
1500Z - - - 15/2 42/1 54/2 111/5 4534/540
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 95/2 39/1 134/3 4668/543
1700Z - - - 56/0 94/1 7/1 157/2 4825/545
1800Z - - - 74/2 13/0 7/1 94/3 4919/548
1900Z - - - 65/1 18/1 - 83/2 5002/550
2000Z - - 24/0 29/0 4/0 1/0 58/0 5060/550 18
2100Z - - 59/0 - 17/3 9/0 85/3 5145/553
2200Z - - 17/1 6/1 27/2 1/0 51/4 5196/557
2300Z 1/1 54/1 1/0 15/2 1/1 10/0 82/5 5278/562
109/46 1114/96 1283/115
Totals: 540/77 1161/114 1071/114
Best 60 minutes: 228 starting 15-Feb-2025 12:15
Worked on 6 bands: (72)
4A7S 9A1A 9A3XV 9A5Y CR2X CR3DX CR3W DD1A DD2D DK1KC DK5PD DK9IP DL3DXX DL6WT DL7YS DM2M DR5X ED1R ED7W ED8X EF6T F6KOP F8KCF G3P G6XX HA3NU HB0WR HC8M HG6N II2Q IK2YCW IK3ORD IO3F IO4X IO5O IP2A KP2M KP4AA LN8W LY4A LZ9W OK7O OL3A OL3Z OM2VL OQ5M OR2F OZ5W P40L PA5KT PC0A PI4DX PJ2T PJ4A S53M S57AL SN2B SN7Q SP8R T48K TM2Y TM7A TO4A UW5Y V3T VP5K VP9I WH7T WP3Z YR8D ZF1A ZF5T
Worked on 5 bands: 172
By continent
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
EU 86 495 1034 1003 1103 921 4642 87.9
SA 5 9 12 31 34 54 145 2.7
NA 13 23 25 29 30 30 150 2.8
AS 0 3 21 71 92 31 218 4.1
AF 3 5 11 10 13 18 60 1.1
OC 2 5 11 17 11 17 63 1.2
Most worked entities
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
DL 15 100 178 178 178 162 811
I 8 35 95 89 96 90 413
UA 16 55 63 97 61 292
OK 8 32 60 48 49 41 238
F 6 28 56 51 43 45 229
SP 3 33 45 49 56 43 229
G 4 26 53 39 61 38 221
PA 5 16 47 47 49 43 207
EA 3 18 43 43 40 35 182
HA 3 19 45 35 40 37 179
S5 3 21 38 33 28 30 153
UR 1 16 26 26 49 33 151
...
JA 4 22 49 14 89
UN 1 3 6 10 1 21