2024 CQ WW Contest CW K5ZD
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2024
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SO(A)AB HP
Operating Time (hrs): 44
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
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160: 131 15 53
80: 376 20 81
40: 1484 36 126
20: 1195 38 128
15: 1086 37 138
10: 1482 34 131
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Total: 5754 180 657 Total Score = 14,002,173
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
My last CQ WW from this QTH may have been the best one! Non-stop action across all bands.
Spent the week doing a business trip to Salt Lake City. Flight home on Thu night was delayed due to weather. Arrived home and fell asleep at 3am on Friday morning. Slept 8 full hours and woke up feeling great at 11am. Never had that much sleep before a big contest.
Rates were amazing all weekend. I was in traditional SO2R mode – running on one band and tuning or chasing spots on the other.
First surprise of the weekend was when I went to 80m. The SWR on the four square was high. NE and SW were 1.8. NW and SE were 2.5. Europe was about the same on that or the dipole. Dark and raining so nothing I could do. People still answered me, but I did not feel loud. During a break on Sat afternoon, I ran up the hill expecting to find a broken rope or wire, but there was no visible issue.
I saw some European spots on 160m. Signals were good and I was having no trouble working stations so decided to try calling CQ. This resulted in a very good run of weak but easily copied Europeans. Even a few extra mults.
Even though there were stations to work, I wanted to grab a nap to be ready for the morning high band rates. Slept 60 minutes and had a bowl of cereal. Bands took another 45 minutes to wake up before the rates exploded. They never slowed down!
Ended the first 24 hours with an incredible 3-hour run on 40 meters.
The line score at 24 hours for 7.0M points was:
Total 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M
3414/154/553 106/12/39 223/17/66 1039/28/110 523/33/105 641/34/125 882/30/108
I am not used to seeing 20m be the low one!
The second day I meant to sleep early, but conditions were just too good. I kept finding more multipliers to work. Finally made myself stop at 0730z and sleep for 2 hours. It breaks My rule of always sleeping in 90-minute intervals, but it felt like the bands were improving so wanted to be on and ready.
Even though the rates were good, it took a while for the bands to sound normal. Signals on 15 and 10 were a bit weak and watery at the start.
I went back down to 20 early to try to improve the totals on that band. It worked out well as the European signals were loud and the band was not crowded. Later in the opening the JAs started calling and were very loud. Nice to have 4 HS stations, 2 BY, and 9M8 call in!
Moved to 40 to try and capture the luck of the first day. With over 1300 QSOs on the band, I think I had worked most of Europe already. Did snag VK6, E2X, and B0A.
The last hour was a mashup of tuning around calling people. I did get lucky and work 3B8M on 80. That was one of the few moments the 4 square SWR returned to normal. Called JAs on 15m and then it was done. The last QSO ticked the score over the 14 million mark.
The old SOA USA record was 12.7M set in 2014. It had a higher multiplier, but less QSOs.
This was a personal best for contacts. I had only had one other year over 5000. The difference maker seemed to be 40m. I felt like the king of the band for some reason. Having 10m open didn’t hurt either!
Amazing activity. Thanks to all the expeditioners who traveled to give us those rare multipliers. Much appreciated!
Thanks to everyone who posted to the scoreboard. Always a motivator for me. At one point K1ZZ was over 100 multipliers ahead of me. I made it my Sat night mission to try to catch up.
I need to get a solid-state amp. There were multipliers I would have chased but I didn’t want to have to retune!
Postscript: The 80m 4 square problem was a broken wire at the feed point of the NE vertical. Can’t believe the antenna worked at all. I was probably dumping most of my power into the dummy load!
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
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm Off
0000Z --+-- --+-- 141/54 --+-- 23/24 --+-- 164/78 164/78
0100Z - - 102/7 39/39 6/3 - 147/49 311/127
0200Z - 3/5 101/8 52/37 - - 156/50 467/177
0300Z 4/7 56/35 85/8 - - - 145/50 612/227
0400Z - 80/27 48/20 - - - 128/47 740/274
0500Z 74/35 - 29/8 - - - 103/43 843/317
0600Z 20/1 69/4 19/11 - - - 108/16 951/333
0700Z 8/8 5/7 49/8 8/9 - - 70/32 1021/365 6
0800Z --+-- --+-- 101/2 17/4 --+-- --+-- 118/6 1139/371
0900Z - - 2/0 1/0 - - 3/0 1142/371 12
1000Z - 3/4 7/4 64/9 10/13 - 84/30 1226/401 60
1100Z - - - 59/6 139/36 9/11 207/53 1433/454
1200Z - - - - 12/9 199/34 211/43 1644/497
1300Z - - - - 13/13 197/6 210/19 1854/516
1400Z - - - - 12/10 177/7 189/17 2043/533
1500Z - - - - 18/13 174/6 192/19 2235/552
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 111/8 59/35 170/43 2405/595
1700Z - - - 12/7 139/4 14/15 165/26 2570/621
1800Z - - - 11/8 128/8 4/3 143/19 2713/640 14
1900Z - - - 151/7 6/5 - 157/12 2870/652
2000Z - - 3/2 102/6 3/1 17/11 125/20 2995/672
2100Z - - 136/1 2/2 3/4 13/4 154/11 3149/683
2200Z - - 131/2 - 2/2 19/6 152/10 3301/693
2300Z - 7/1 84/3 5/4 15/5 - 111/13 3412/706
0000Z --+-- 7/3 65/5 7/4 20/2 --+-- 99/14 3511/720
0100Z 1/0 8/0 14/1 8/1 2/2 - 33/4 3544/724 32
0200Z 8/2 12/2 7/5 38/3 1/1 - 66/13 3610/737
0300Z 11/11 41/2 3/1 5/0 - - 60/14 3670/751
0400Z 5/4 43/4 3/0 2/3 - - 53/11 3723/762
0500Z - 4/4 107/0 1/1 - - 112/5 3835/767
0600Z - 18/1 90/2 - - - 108/3 3943/770
0700Z - - 2/0 24/2 - - 26/2 3969/772 33
0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 3969/772 60
0900Z - - - - - - 0/0 3969/772 60
1000Z - - 11/5 26/1 5/0 - 42/6 4011/778 11
1100Z - - - 97/4 72/2 - 169/6 4180/784
1200Z - - - - 102/0 50/14 152/14 4332/798
1300Z - - - 4/4 22/2 139/3 165/9 4497/807
1400Z - - - - 17/4 123/1 140/5 4637/812
1500Z - - - - 8/0 141/2 149/2 4786/814
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 33/0 109/3 142/3 4928/817
1700Z - - - 9/1 115/1 7/0 131/2 5059/819
1800Z - - - 119/0 16/0 3/1 138/1 5197/820
1900Z - - - 150/2 1/0 11/2 162/4 5359/824
2000Z - - - 107/1 1/0 14/0 122/1 5481/825
2100Z - - 7/4 72/1 6/1 1/1 86/7 5567/832 8
2200Z - 2/2 89/1 2/0 8/1 2/0 103/4 5670/836
2300Z - 18/0 48/0 1/0 17/1 - 84/1 5754/837
131/68 1484/162 1086/175
Totals: 376/101 1195/166 1482/165
Best 60 minutes: 238 starting 33-Nov-2024 11:26
Worked on 6 bands (45):
8P5A 9A1A CN3A CR3A CR3W D4DX DA0RR DF0HQ DJ1SL DL5JS DM2M DP9A DR4A EF6T ES9C
G6T KH6J KP2B LN8W LY5W LZ9W M6T M6W MD4K OK1PI OL3Z OT7T OX7AM OZ5W PA9M PJ2T
PJ4A PJ4K SM6LJU SN7O SP2LNW TK0C TM2Y TM6M TO4A V47T VP5M VP9I YT5A ZF1A
Most worked entities
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
DL 24 67 240 177 161 243 912
UA 14 100 58 65 123 360
I 1 14 93 62 66 79 315
SP 5 18 68 58 67 82 298
G 4 14 71 40 43 82 254
OK 4 12 65 37 44 66 228
F 2 15 49 48 38 50 202
PA 4 11 45 44 22 53 179
EA 1 8 43 43 39 38 172
UR 1 7 53 24 35 51 171
VE 16 21 48 29 17 15 146
HA 1 11 45 31 20 24 132
SM 3 8 31 26 31 31 130
JA 6 63 38 14 121
S5 3 8 31 24 17 33 116
YO 1 5 37 15 22 31 111
OH 2 5 17 23 18 36 101