PACC 2020 contest review

Event: PACC 2020
Section:  Single Operator All band SSB low assisted
Logger: N1MM+ newest version
TRX: Icom IC-7300 100W
Antenna 1: Inverted-V 2x20m @12m apex
Antenna 2: Multiband vertical @16m
Antenna 3: 3 band PE1BVQ endfed @groundlevel with radials


Well, the most important HF contest for us dutch radioamateurs is over. We did have fun and have to wait till next year. Propagation was great......well at least for solarcycle minimum. No..... propagation has not been really good and at certain times I thought there was a almost complete blackout. But there was propagation for shure, only no stations on SSB. 15m was open at certain times but there were only few stations. I worked Israel and Brazil for the only 2 on that band. 20m was not really good, almost the same as last year. Worked only a few stations from north america. Most of the stations came from east european countries on that band with a few exceptions. Even not many Italians. 40m was good at times, again no participating stations. HZ1TT (Saudi Arabia) was booming in at saturday evening, worked him but he didn't participate in the PACC contest. A neighbour station PD2TW told me he had been calling for 1 hour on 40m without any response, he never had that before. I almost had the same experience on 80m. Normally in the past years, the time after the evening 8 O'clock news was always good for large pile ups. But this year I could call without much response. Best band actually was 160m, it was occupied by the dutch....and I had a steady response for a while. The score... well it is disappointing. I never had such a bad score ever in this section. I have been searching in my archives and always made 500-600 QSOs except for 2008 and a few years that I did participate in the QRP section. Is it a reflection of the bad propagation or is it just choosing the wrong band at the wrong time? I still miss a good antenna for the 20m band, I'm shure my score would improve if I had a good beam for that band. I tried my best on 20m this time but around 90 is really the max. I can do, almost the same as last year.

Some stats:

Best QSO rate was in the morning at 7 UTC actually. I took a break to sleep at 00:30 till 5:30 UTC. QSO rate at 00:00 went down to zero and I could hear almost no stations at all except for some die hard dutch contest club stations.

No north america on 80m or 40m this time. O yes, there was propagation, I heard several stations on the DX part of the 80m band, but non that participate in the PACC contest. 40m was also open to the middle east but did hear nothing. Have been chasing E44CC for a while sunday morning but although he had a good signal he didn't hear me at all.

48 DXCC worked, might not be bad under the circumstances.  But is was not all bad. I had a nice chat with OY1R (Faroer Isl.) Regin at night on both 160m and 80m with beautiful strong signals. As you know we met 4 years ago when Regin brought me his QSL card personally. And there were a lot of friendly operators all around like always in this contest. Some of them I know personally, others have familiar calls that always show up in this contest. It was fun and that's the most important thing...