CQ WPX Contest SSB 2010

Hello to all reading my blog (I doubt someone does read it, but just in case:-))!

Last weekend I participated in SSB part of CQ WPX Contest. My equipment was Yaesu FT-857D transceiver, 3-el. tribander for 20/15/10 metres and inverted vees for 80/40 metres. For logging I used N1MM logger installed on my HP Compaq 6715b laptop, that was connected to TRX by G4ZLP DigiMaster Pro interface.

The setup was working fine, except for one little problem – when I had my laptop connected to TRX and N1MM was communicating with it (monitoring its frequency etc.), I heard a strange annoying sound in my headphones, that didn’t react at all to volume knob. I tried to ignore it at first, but after some time I decided to disconnect laptop and TRX and to use the logger “offline” (to manually change bands, …). I still don’t know what caused the sound, will have to figure it till the next contest.

I started contesting on 80 meters band, the first QSO was logged 43 seconds after start of contest. During first hour I managed to make 36 QSO, mostly with European stations (the only exception was EB8AH from Canary Islands, AF). I went to bed at 01:50 UTC with 52 QSOs in my log. At the moment I thought it was not a bad start, but now I do regret not switching to 40 meters band for a while.

I woke up at 06:50 UTC and went to 20 meters band and was there (with some small breaks and one short “trip” to 15 meters band) until 11:35 when I had my lunch. My QSO count was 118.

After lunch (at 13:30 UTC) I beamed my tribander to 300 degrees and tried to search some US stations. I made 10 QSOs on 20 meters band (5 of them with US stations), but that was all. I was quite tired and so I took ANOTHER break. I went to help my Dad with processing 16 cubic meters of firewood, that he bought 2 weeks ago at local sawmill – for the whole “firewood” story see article “skvělá koupě” (=”great bargain” in Czech) on his blog (CZ only).

I returned back to radio at about 15:00. The following hour and a half was maybe the best for me, I made a lot of QSOs on 15 meters – most of them with U.S. stations.

I kept contesting almost till the end of contest, even though I had to go to Prague on the next day. Unfortunately I cannot describe the rest of contest, because I’m finishing this article a little later (14th May 2010) and don’t remember the details. So I’ll just post here table of TOP 10 contacted countries and short score summary.

DXCC entity 3.5 MHz 7 MHz 14 MHz 21 MHz 28 MHz All bands
European Russia 5 12 26 14 0 57
United States of America 4 1 15 30 0 50
Asiatic Russia 1 2 19 18 1 41
Spain 1 6 10 0 0 17
Ukraine 4 5 8 0 0 17
Fed. Rep. of Germany 9 7 0 0 0 16
Italy 3 7 3 0 0 13
Netherlands 4 7 0 0 0 11
Finland 1 4 5 0 0 10
Kazakhstan 0 1 5 4 0 10

Summary: I made 415 QSOs into 68 DXCC entities, thanks to which I gained 958 points and 293 mults for WPX prefixes. Net operating time was nearly 22 hours and my claimed score is 280 694 points. I’m very happy with it, since it’s my best score so far. I submitted results to contest manager and will write here my final score and position.

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