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Tuesday, March 29, 2022

#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.



2 comments:

  1. Bas interesant jouw ervaringen met contesten in bijzondere tijden. Ik denk dat deze oorlog situatie lange tijd invloed zal hebben ook op de contesten

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Zeker bijzondere tijden Jaap. Jammer dat onze hobby er op zo een manier toch bij betrokken raakt. 73, Bas

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Thanks for your comment. Bedankt voor je reactie. 73, Bas