CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB - 2022
Call: V47T
Operator(s): K5ZD
Station: V47T
Class: SOAB HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 45.2
OpMode: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
------------------------------
160: 41 6 14
80: 617 17 71
40: 1385 26 80
20: 2009 34 97
15: 2339 29 93
10: 3111 25 96
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Total: 9502 137 459 Total Score = 13,526,816
Club: None
Comments
The contest began a week before on Saturday with a 3am departure from home to make a 5:45 am flight out of Boston. Met up with N2NT in Miami and on to St Kitts. We got right to work and in 3.5 days had fixed some antennas and added new ones. It was warm and humid. We then spent another day getting the shack arranged with new antenna switching automation from Green Heron Engineering. I dropped Andy off at the airport on Thursday at noon so he could fly home and then join the K3LR team for the contest.
I spent the rest of the day fighting software conflicts and peculiarities. Things that seemed simple at home are not the same once you have taken them apart and tried to reassemble them in a new environment. One discovery was that the Green Heron server needed to be started before the Microham router.
I had to use DXLog because it worked with the Green Heron switching. I took a crash course in learning the software the week before I left home. It worked flawlessly. The main issue was the op not being able to type fast enough or falling asleep between QSOs.
I got good sleep during the week but was feeling the effects of the station-building efforts as the contest approached. Decided to power through the first night and then make the decision if I would sleep the second night. In retrospect, I could
have skipped two slow hours for a 90-minute nap and made up for it during the high rates on Sat morning. I started to get loopy on Sat evening around 0100z. I kept zoning out in the middle of a QSO. Even so, it looks like I worked more than a hundred QSOs that I don’t really remember.
Bands were slow to open on Sat so got to spend an hour or so on 20, then 15, and then finally to 10m. Kept working between 10 and 15, but probably should have committed to the endless stream of stations on 10m. Sunday was better with 10m open just 30 mins after sunrise.
Rates were incredible. QRM was the biggest limiting factor. Had a great frequency on 10m Sunday morning until TM0DX decided to land about 5 Khz away with his 10 Khz of splatter.
Some line noise had appeared as we were setting up on Wed afternoon. The power company came out Thu (amazingly!) and was able to cut the lines until they found the source. It was down the road, but the noise was radiating the most from the dead-end pole closest to the station. The noise was annoying on all bands except for a period on Sunday morning, but I could usually find an antenna that could hear. This did make me a bit of an alligator on 20m.
Always amazing how many YB stations call in. It seems that path is open across all bands at any time. Even worked one on 75m.
Even though I had two radios, DXLog reported only 120 S&P QSOs. I was almost entirely in run mode and used the second radio to scope out frequencies for band changes.
On Sunday morning I was starting to feel pain in my throat from all the talking. Tried to use the voice keyer more, but still had to say all the callsigns.
Where were the Africans? Mostly worked EA8 stations + CN3A and a 5R. That was it!
One of the new antennas we put up was a Double L for 160m. We had hoped to hang it from an 80′ tower but discovered the top of the tower was too rusted to safely climb. Decided on hanging from 60′. The SWR curve was perfect. We did work two Europeans on Wednesday evening. But, conditions on 160 during the contest were terrible. I worked all multipliers that I heard but did not feel loud. Need another contest to determine if this antenna is a keeper or not.
Hard to complain or make excuses about a contest where you make 9500 QSOs! Even so, sure would like to have made it to 10k. A bit less line noise and it may have been possible. High level contesting is all about hearing the weak guys and it was tough at times.
Thanks to Andy N2NT for allowing me to use the station. He has done an incredible amount of work to build and maintain the place. It is a dream radio location on a 1200′ hill just a mile or so from the ocean with a horizon view from North to East.
The station is very isolated. After the contest, I packed everything up and was ready to come down to town, but the jeep would not start. V44KAI saved the day by driving up and cleaning the corrosion off the battery cables. Whew. Would have been a tough place to get AAA…
Looking forward to seeing other single-op scores from the region to see what I may have missed. Doing 45 hours of running, you get a very small view of the full contest activity and propagation. I had a blast doing the contest and will be very happy with any result. Thanks to everyone that called in.
The full contest was recorded and is available at the link below. You can enjoy my struggles with the QRM and line noise while hearing how your station sounded on my end.
Recording
Audio recordings of the full operation are available here.
Statistics
QSOs By Continent
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total %
NA 37 371 981 1519 1314 1559 5781 60.8
EU 0 228 334 363 920 1462 3307 34.8
SA 3 10 22 62 35 30 162 1.7
AS 0 1 25 28 37 31 122 1.3
AF 1 4 5 11 6 16 43 0.5
OC 0 3 17 25 26 12 83 0.9
Rates
QSO/ZN+DX by hour and band
Hour 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total Cumm Off
0000Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 302/57 1/2 --+-- 303/59 303/59
0100Z - - - 302/14 - - 302/14 605/73
0200Z - - 142/26 85/3 - - 227/29 832/102
0300Z - - 268/18 - - - 268/18 1100/120
0400Z - 37/20 152/31 - - - 189/51 1289/171
0500Z - 165/39 29/4 - - - 194/43 1483/214
0600Z 7/10 84/11 54/5 - - - 145/26 1628/240
0700Z - 35/2 86/8 - - - 121/10 1749/250
0800Z 3/3 11/2 37/3 1/1 --+-- --+-- 52/9 1801/259
0900Z 12/2 - 21/5 9/2 - - 42/9 1843/268 11
1000Z - 41/2 - 115/15 38/26 - 194/43 2037/311
1100Z - - - - 258/40 3/6 261/46 2298/357
1200Z - - - - - 290/44 290/44 2588/401
1300Z - - - - - 287/13 287/13 2875/414
1400Z - - - - - 266/13 266/13 3141/427
1500Z - - - - 109/7 126/4 235/11 3376/438
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 247/10 5/2 252/12 3628/450
1700Z - - - - - 240/9 240/9 3868/459
1800Z - - - - - 227/2 227/2 4095/461
1900Z - - - - 285/7 1/1 286/8 4381/469
2000Z - - - - 306/9 - 306/9 4687/478
2100Z - - - 40/3 182/4 10/5 232/12 4919/490
2200Z - - - 217/14 - - 217/14 5136/504
2300Z - - - 233/2 - - 233/2 5369/506
0000Z --+-- --+-- --+-- 242/4 --+-- --+-- 242/4 5611/510
0100Z - - - 63/1 4/2 - 67/3 5678/513 23
0200Z - - 199/4 - - - 199/4 5877/517
0300Z - - 193/3 - - - 193/3 6070/520
0400Z - 105/5 63/1 - - - 168/6 6238/526
0500Z 18/4 98/4 3/1 - - - 119/9 6357/535
0600Z - - 126/3 2/2 - - 128/5 6485/540
0700Z - - 9/0 3/0 - - 12/0 6497/540 50
0800Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 0/0 6497/540 60
0900Z - 40/2 1/0 - - - 41/2 6538/542 45
1000Z - - - 2/0 169/6 - 171/6 6709/548
1100Z - - - - 97/3 135/3 232/6 6941/554
1200Z - - - - - 237/5 237/5 7178/559
1300Z - - - - 7/0 188/5 195/5 7373/564
1400Z - - - - 182/2 28/1 210/3 7583/567
1500Z - - - - 23/1 169/1 192/2 7775/569
1600Z --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- --+-- 244/1 244/1 8019/570
1700Z 1/1 1/1 1/1 - - 214/4 217/7 8236/577
1800Z - - - - - 262/2 262/2 8498/579
1900Z - - - - 48/0 168/0 216/0 8714/579
2000Z - - 1/1 44/2 179/1 - 224/4 8938/583
2100Z - - - 166/7 - - 166/7 9104/590
2200Z - - - 6/0 188/2 11/0 205/2 9309/592
2300Z - - - 177/4 16/0 - 193/4 9502/596
Total: 41/20 617/88 1385/114 2009/131 2339/122 3111/121
Best 60 mins: 312 between 29-Oct-2022 19:37 and 20:36
Worked on 6 bands
AA3B AB3CX AG4Q D4Z FM5KC K1LZ K3LR K3WW K4AB K4ZW K8AZ K9CT KP3DX KP4AA N2LBR
N5OT NA2U P40L PJ2T PJ4G VE3EJ W3LPL WA2JQK ZF1A
Most Worked Countries
160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M Total
K 26 336 885 1364 1217 1447 5275
DL 27 38 58 146 242 511
I 27 49 27 113 158 374
VE 2 11 64 126 72 84 359
G 15 18 34 70 160 297
EA 17 30 23 58 118 246
F 25 25 19 68 105 242
PA 8 11 21 39 83 162
SP 10 10 13 49 54 136
OH 9 17 14 33 31 104
Postscript
The final results came out and, as expected, I finished #2 in the World behind N6KT at PJ4K. Very proud of the effort.
Rank Call Cty Category Score QSOs Zones Cty Hours Op
1 PJ4K PJ4 SO HIGH ALL 16,224,072 9,386 153 444 44.6 N6KT
2 V47T V4 SO HIGH ALL 13,340,329 9,403 137 462 45.4 K5ZD
The band breakdowns were interesting to see both in how they are similar, yet different.
Call 160M 80M 40M 20M 15M 10M
PJ4K 130/10/17 524/22/64 1,126/26/82 2,226/33/84 2,361/35/97 3,019/27/100
V47T 41/ 6/14 613/17/71 1,367/26/89 1,992/34/98 2,319/29/93 3,071/25/ 97
The impact of the 2-point vs 3-point scoring in CQWW is significant. I have access to the CQWW logs and log checking software so I made a few tests to see how the scores compare if we were both on the same continent. It would have been close!
For example, if both of us were in South America
QSOs QPts Zone Cty Mult Score
V47T 9403 27603 137 462 599 16,534,197
PJ4K 9386 27170 153 444 597 16,220,490
If we were both in North America
V47T 9403 22262 137 462 599 13,334,938
PJ4K 9386 21683 153 444 597 12,944,751
