#CQWW WPX SSB 2022 contest review

Event: CQWW WPX SSB 2022
Section: SOAB assisted
Logger: N1MM+ 
Station: Icom IC-7300 (100W)
Antenna 1: 160m sloper
Antenna 2: 10m LFA @14m
Antenna 3: Multiband vertical @16m
Antenna 4: 2x20m inverted-V doublet

 

A historical WPX contest since Russian and Belarussian stations were not counting for point or multipliers. This due to the war in Ukraine. I worked only one Russian station. No other Russians were heard except for some that talked to each other well below 14130 KHz. A very strange experience since normally the 20m band would be crowded with Russian stations early in the morning. 

I didn't work VK (Australia) last year in this contest and actually it seems I always struggle to hear and work VK in contests. But this year they were on the band and I worked a couple of them on 20m and 10m. As a matter of fact propagation was very good Saturday morning with not only VK coming in strong but also  a couple of stations from Hawaii. They were really RS59 at times, captured AH7C in the video below. I concentrated on working DX and multipliers this year and work less Europeans. There is a difference in points. 160-40m 2 points for non-DX and 6 points for DX, 20-10m 1 point for non-DX and 3 points for DX. So it makes a considerable difference if you aim for DX. Besides that I'm not really a contester, I really like to work DX. It went well this year, contacts all over the globe. Although I missed some DX as well. I still receive far more as I can reach with my 100W transmitter. For instance I heard some stations from ZL (New Zealand) and KL7 (Alaska) but they didn't hear me although their signals were at a reasonable strength. On 10m I heard 9N7AA from Nepal with real RS59 (captured on video) I called many times but was unable to work him. I also heard V47T, V31XX, PJ4R and PJ2T on 10m, not really strong but I could understand them well. Unfortunately they probabely all work with a minimum of 1 KW so I had no chance at all. No problem since a lot of other nice DX could be worked well. I was astonished by the strong signals from V31XX (Belize) and V47T (ST.Kitts & Nevis) on 40m, real RS57-9 at times and really easy to work with my system. 

The fun in this contest for me are two things. Working pile-ups on 80m and working unexpected DX and have some chats in between the busy contest traffic. Since my doublet 2x20m inverted-V does well on 80m it is a real pile up creator. No problem to attract stations. Should I try to do a single (80m) band effort in the future? I didn't spend much time on 80m this year because I wanted to work DX on the higher bands. The real surprise for me was a nice chat with Paul 3B8HE (G8AFC) I was clear enough at that memorable moment to capture most of the contact on video.