I previously posted about gearing up for CQWW CW this past weekend. I talk a lot about goals and since I decided to go all out, I set some for my effort. Now, I consider myself an expert DX’er and will mow right over you in a DX pileup and I’ve won some of the VHF contests, setting a new national record twice. But HF contests require a significantly different skill set that I haven’t mastered. Some of it is geographical location. I will never be able to compete with the east coast folks since Europe is a huge contest center that favors the W1, 2, and 3 ops. I like to compare contest notes with my buddy K1ZZ in CT and keep up with multi-ops at K3LR and W3LPL. Locally our contest super hero is N5DX and K5GO. I am not even close to that level, far from it – to quote AC-DC, “It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll” !

As I noted in my earlier post, I love a CW fray and had a great time this past weekend but I fell short of my goals. I wanted to break 5 million points but only made it to 4,912,671. I missed three of my QSO goals also. The totals were:

160 - 17 (goal 50)

80 - 206 (goal 300)

40 – 757 (goal 750)

20 – 448 (goal 750)

15 – 509 (goal 500)

10 – 744 (goal 500)

Even though I exceeded my goal on 40, 15, and 10 I was deficient on 160, 80, and 20. I didn’t worry too much about 160. Even though prop had been good the few days leading up to Friday night the band folded and went basically dead. 80 was decent, but not as expected. For 20 meters, I’m simply not good at moving to 20 when needed during openings on the other bands. The highlight here was Saturday between 2300z and 0000z with a massive 10 meter opening to SE Asia. Signals from HS, XV, DU, BY YB, V85, HL, and JA were 20 to 30 dB over S9. Quite amazing. By comparison, Sunday night around the same time, just before the contest end, I could barely hear JA’s at that time! I also enjoyed hearing some severe over the pole flutter on the Russian signals and zones 17, 18, 19, and 40. Reminded me of “old times”!

You can see my claimed totals at https://www.3830scores.com/showrumor.php?arg=RvYizV77nYJneU

I’m not good at SO2R. For you new folks, that is “Single Op 2 Radio” and even though some radio manufacturers brag that their radio is “SO2R” please understand that is an operator skill, NOT a radio !!! It takes considerable practice and experience to even reach low proficiency. I’m far from it.

The station performed extremely well. I was very, very pleased with everything. I consider myself and expert at station building, I’m just lacking as an HF contest operator. Regardless, the station performed flawlessly for the entire contest period.

I basically achieved DXCC on four bands and hit sixty on 80 meters. Only 11 on 160 with a dead band.

I got up Friday morning at 4 AM with my customary morning routine and did some final checks and assessment throughout the day and had lunch with Kim at noon. I started the contest right at 6 PM local time Friday. I was up through the night Friday night and all-day Saturday. Around 2 AM Sunday morning my body told me I needed a nap as I was starting to doze off so I grabbed a 3-hour nap on the couch in the shack and was back on at 5:30 AM. I did take a one-hour break at noon on Sunday for lunch and a 1 mile walk down the road and back for a little exercise.

Sunday at 6 PM when the contest ended, I exported the log into my regular station log, uploaded to LoTW then generated a Cabrillo file and uploaded it to CQWW. I then assessed the station and began shutting things down. I strolled into the den, picked up a drink and sat down in my recliner. About 5 minutes later I abruptly woke up to some cold and wet in my lap – I was holding my drink, fell asleep, and dumped it all over me !!!!! It was time to ditch the recliner and go to bed.

Summary – I love CW and really enjoyed the weekend.

73 Joel W5ZN