CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW - 2020
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Class: Single Op HP
Operating Time (hrs): 12
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 872 State/Prov = 52 Countries = 55 Total Score = 344,647
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Station:
K3 + AL-1200
1/4-wave GP, shunt fed tower
Comments:
Always a fun way to spend a winter weekend. Although it was so nice outside both days it felt like Spring!
Not a serious effort. Took plenty of time off during the evenings to binge watch some TV shows. Stayed up too late, then tried to get up for sunrise. Then tired all day. 🙂
Seemed to be able to hear Europeans most of both evenings, but they couldn’t always hear me. Called lots of guys with no response. Must have been crowded in Eu because was very difficult to find a clear frequency enough to get answers.
Can’t believe I missed NV, SD, ND, and WY. We sure missed VY2ZM to hand out the PEI mult too.
Got up at sunrise both mornings, but not much to show for it except the KH6 mult.
Thanks to all for the QSOs. Amazing how activity on Top Band keeps getting bigger and better. Some of the country counts are amazing.
Breakdowns:
By Continent:
160 Total %
NA 711 711 81.5
EU 149 149 17.1
SA 4 4 0.5
AF 6 6 0.7
OC 1 1 0.1
AS 1 1 0.1
ARRL RTTY Roundup - 2020
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: Single Op HP
Operating Time (hrs): 9.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band RTTY Qs Dig Qs
80: 196
40: 389
20: 323
15: 45
10: 0
Total: 953 0 State/Prov = 54 Countries = 50 Total Score = 99,112
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Always fun. Agreat way to spend a winter weekend.
Put a new 80m dipole up on Sat morning. It is a keeper. Had some of my best 80m runs ever. Band was really good too.
Had trouble getting RTTY to work correctly at the start of the contest. Finally re-registered OMMT.ocx and then everything started working. Another challenge from a recent hard disk crash and having to rebuild the computer.
Thanks to everyone for the QSOs. I love how the operating speed and savvy keeps getting better every year.
With so many breaks I have no idea how this log will fit within the limit of only 2 off-times!
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2019
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: SO(A)AB HP
QTH: MA
Operating Time (hrs): 40
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
160: 267 17 77
80: 655 27 101
40: 979 34 134
20: 1691 34 146
15: 202 24 87
10: 36 11 25
Total: 3830 147 570 Total Score = 7,769,412
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
I wanted to do the contest, but didn’t do the mental prep work to commit for a full effort. I “quit” for the first time after just 4 hours. But, as always, the contest and online scoreboard sucked me in.
Didn’t hurt that the weather outside was raining and cold. That meant no line noise for most of the contest, but we did have severe rain static on Sunday afternoon. Part of my 40m run during that time was listening on a dipole that was up 30 feet.
Slept 90 mins the first night. Then 3 hours early Sat evening and then another 90 mins before sunrise.
There were no other daytime bands besides 20m so spent most of my time there. Lots of spot chasing on the second radio.
That was surely the best 160m conditions we have ever had
for a WW CW. I had some short runs to Eu both nights. Sat night the signal levels were great and
there was NO noise. Even the last hour
had good signals from Eu. Sure never
expected to have a better line score on 160 than on 15!
As good as 80m was at Eu sunrise, what happened to
40m? It was empty even as I worked
Europeans on 160 and 80 well past their sunrise.
15 opened very early both mornings, then faded, and then
came back as sunset passed the eastern stations. Glad I got most of my mults on Sat, because
was not as good on Sun morning.
Never felt loud all weekend. And never had the really big rates, but it
was always interesting and entertaining.
Had to keep reminding myself not to fall into DXing. Rate is king in this contest!
The list of broken stuff keeps getting longer. No rotatable antenna on 15m. Direction indicator on the tribander is out. Tri-bander showed high SWR on 20m Sunday (never had that before). 20m stack system has a control cable short somewhere. 40m antenna is intermittent on receive due to corrosion at the feedpoint… I should have addressed all this during the nice Summer and Fall weather, but what’s the fun in that?
I did record the contest if anyone wants to hear
something.
Thanks to everyone who traveled to give out a multiplier. I have never had anywhere close to 140 countries on a band as a single op – and half the world was out of range due to propagation. Missed zones 23, 24,28 and 34.
Final score after log checking applied:
Band QSOs QTCs Mul
80 m 109 29 128 Lost:
40 m 198 225 168 Lost:
20 m 222 663 124 Lost:
15 m 40 58 34 Lost:
10 m 0 0 0 Lost:
Total 569 975 454 ==> 700.976
The score reduction in percent is: -1.22%
ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Class: Single Op HP
Operating Time (hrs): 19.8
Summary:
Band QSOs
---------------
160: 0
80: 275
40: 485
20: 355
15: 38
10: 0
---------------
Total: 1153 Sections 83 Total Score 191,398
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments
My 43rd consecutive year with more than 1000 QSOs in SS CW!
After 8400 QSOs in WW SSB last weekend, it was hard to get motivated to do the slow rates of SSCW. Focused on continuing my streak – now 43 consecutive years with more than 1000 QSOs in SS CW!
Put the station back together on Friday afternoon. Some of it had been disassembled for the trip down to V4 for CQWW. Also discovered high SWR on the 80m 4-square. Turned out to be a broken wire at one of the feed points. Easily repaired.
Contest started OK, but it felt like activity was not as high as in past years. This really showed up when rates slowed late Sat evening.
Sunday was the usual grind with everyone on 20m. Would go 7 minutes with no answer and then get 3 in a row.
Still one of my favorite contests due to the need to actually copy info. Always a thrill to get all of the info from a weak station in one pass. Mixed with the agony of needing just one thing and the guy sending his whole exchange again, only to miss that one thing again…
Thanks to everyone who got on. Special thanks to KV0I for NE, N5NA for WTX, N7IV for ND, and VY1AAA for NWT.
Had to end early to pick my wife up at the airport. I didn’t mind missing the end… it was getting slow. 🙂
Call: V47T
Operator(s): K5ZD
Class: SOAB HP
Operating Time (hrs): 44
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
160: 51 13 33
80: 525 17 67
40: 1930 28 100
20: 2501 27 99
15: 3156 27 104
10: 126 16 45
Total: 8389 128 448 Total Score 11,604,672
Club: None
Comments
Doing a competitive SOAB in CQWW SSB has been a dream of mine. Amazingly lucky to go from a seat request on the cq-contest reflector a few weeks ago to fulfilling that dream from V47T.
The original plan was to do MS with NP4Z, but Felipe ran into some work conflicts and offered me the chance to do a single op. N2NT and NP4Z had planned a trip to do station repairs. I felt like a rock star when they picked me up at the airport and helped get everything set up for the contest! It was lonely when they left for home on Wed. Gave me some time to enjoy the beach and drive around the island.
The station is on a hilltop at about 1000 feet ASL. It is a steep drop toward Europe down to the ocean about a mile away. Not bad to USA either. It requires an AWD vehicle to reach the station.
There a million stories and comments I could report but will have to wait for another day. Still in recovery mode.
Slept 3 hours Sun morning. Rates were getting slow and I knew I would need it to push through another day of QSO making on the high bands.
Was completely isolated in a concrete bunker for the weekend with a single window to see if it was daylight or dark. For 48+ hours I did not think about anything except where the next QSO was coming from.
A bit disappointed with the mults, but conditions just weren’t open very deep. So went with a run at all times strategy. Never heard zones 19, 23, 24, 29, or 34.
Hilltops on islands in the Caribbean rock.
Amazing all the activity that shows up on the bands during CQWW. Thank you all for making it the best radio weekend of the year. And again, thanks to N2NT and NP4Z for use of the station and V44KAI for local support.
View to Europe
Operating position
Tired op at end of contest
Some numbers…
QSOs by Continent/Band
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
NA 130 404 1179 1665 1572 42 4992 59.5
SA 4 14 42 33 41 26 160 1.9
EU 15 96 647 740 1480 45 3023 36.0
AF 1 6 10 9 18 11 55 0.7
AS 0 2 27 48 30 2 109 1.3
OC 0 3 25 6 14 0 48 0.6
Casual effort. Back and shoulder injury made it hard to stay in chair for long stints.
Conditions were not the best. Thought 15m might open a few times, but it would just tease with a few QSOs and then be dead again. Was able to work some Europeans on 80, but it was hard. Signals sounded a bit hollow.
Amazing activity on 20m. I heard RTTY all the way up to 14152!
This is always one of the my favorite contests. Since I was in and out, I enjoyed watching the contestonlinescoreboard and trying to catch whoever was in front of me.
Hard to get much extra rate doing dual CQ when only one band is open at a time.
Call: K5ZD
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: K5ZD
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: MA
Operating Time (hrs): 25
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs QTCs Mults
80: 204 40 156
40: 362 459 123
20: 752 910 94
15: 181 80 72
10: 4 0 8
Total: 1503 1489 453 Total Score = 1,355,376
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
I turned 60 on Saturday of the contest. Enjoyed the good
conditions and working almost 1000 QSOs. Then it got noisy and the activity
went away. Too slow on Sunday!
Very strong CR6K on 10m Sat morning. Tried calling CQ but only one answer from EF5Y. Still, never expected to work EU on 10m.
This was my first true attempt at automated 2BSIQ (dual
CQ). WriteLog has great automation to
help, but sometimes the operator just couldn’t keep up. Sorry for those I didn’t work while trying to
unscramble the log.
Lots of QSB on signals.
A guy would call and be loud, then be weak when he sent his report. Had to ask for a lot of repeats. Even worse Sat evening on the low bands when
the QRN was higher.
Was fun to watch the scoreboard and chase N6MJ, KO7SS, and AA3B all weekend. Kept me in the chair much longer than I had intended.
I think this contest would be more fun on the receiving side of QTCs… The only challenge for the sender is carefully picking guys who are loud and can copy the code.
Thanks to my family for letting me spend a beautiful summer day playing radio. And thanks to N1PGA for helping me fix the 80m 4-square and 15m beam the days before the contest.
I had a flight to catch Sunday morning so I knew I would
miss the last hour of the contest. But,
wanted to see if I could collect some good WRTC qualifying points. Figured I would start and then have the
option to continue or quit depending on conditions.
Conditions were interesting. Fun to hear the loud Eu HQ stations come in at various times on E-skip on 10 and 15m.
Had dual CQ going for awhile on 15/20 and that really
helped the rates and fun factor. When EU got loud on 20 CW, I went to SSB and
had a great run. Really needed the
points as the first few hours were mostly 1 pointers from zone 8.
Don’t really have enough antenna to do well on 40m. And it was noisy so couldn’t try dual CQ.
Never heard a JA all weekend. Was running a lot so didn’t tune as much as I probably should have.
160m was interesting. Some guys could hear and some could not. I did have a small run which produced a number of multipliers.
Finally decided that sleep would be more beneficial than
grinding out the wee hours. From the
scoreboard, that may have cost me 200-300 QSOs.
Best motivation was chasing VA2WA on the scoreboard. Almost caught him a few times and then his multiplier would jump. I soon suspected he was probably using the cluster, but it was still fun to chase him and others. Great job by AA3B and W1KM on CW.
Some antenna issues that will need to be diagnosed. The top 15m beam would not turn so was stuck west all weekend. That left me trying to run guys with the low antenna at 33′. The 40m beam continues to be intermittent at the feed point.
Call: K5ZD Operator(s): K5ZD Class: SO Unlimited HP QTH: W1 Operating Time (hrs): 30 Radios: SO2R Band QSOs Mults 160: 239 71 80: 548 90 40: 911 110 20: 1291 116 15: 404 89 10: 3 2 Total: 3396 478 Total Score 4,869,864 Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Best low band conditions ever! Amazed to have 62 countries on 160 in just
the first night! No QRN. Must have been
quiet in Europe too because was able to call and have guys respond on the first
try.
Various antenna and equipment problems continue to
indicate the need for more station maintenance.
Couldn’t access the stack on 15m so did most of my work on the 5-ele at
33′. Alpha 76CA started making a burning
smell so my wife made me turn it off.
Switched in the backup AL-1200, but it had a relay problem so wouldn’t
always hear well after transmitting.
Missed some great hours on Sat afternoon while building
bedroom furniture for my daughter.
Heard 4 stations on 10m and managed to work 3 of them. It was stone cold dead.
Fun having the cluster spots so I could chase DX between running. Also nice to have the scoreboard going to keep up the motivation.
No excuses. Had a blast and more than exceeded my goals.
Thanks to everyone around the world who hunt for W/VE QSOs all weekend.