Whiskey Two Radio Echo

CQWW WPX Contest, SSB

Call: WW2DX
Operator(s): W2RE, WW2DX, KB2HZI
Station: W2RE

Class: M/S HP
QTH:
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
Band QSOs
————
160: 9
80: 464
40: 870
20: 1564
15: 1807
10: 63
————
Total: 4777 Prefixes = 1449 Total Score = 21,539,385

Club: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

Pre-Game:

Going into this we had one goal and that was to work as many EU as possible. We
figured US would just call us anyway and we would work them off the back of the
beams. Preparation started a week ago, I took my K3 and all the cables needed
and hooked the shack up, got the software all working, things looked good
before we left and it felt good knowing we could show up an hour before the
contest on Friday and start operating. Its a 2 hour drive from home to the
Catskill QTH so just after work we headed up. We went over the game plan just
before the contest and it was to work non-stop, make 4K q’s, have the highest
qso total on 40m and hit the 2nd radio as much as possible. Lori KB2HZI would
not only keep us well fed but also hit the 2nd radio maximizing the mults while
we tried to rest our eyes for 15-20min clips.

Game-Time:

We took off running on 40 and yes it was a complete mad house and as soon as
the rate would start falling from the QRM we switched to split to the bottom of
the band and sure enough that was successful, rate back up, I think sometimes we
forget to do this since the BC’s have been kicked out of the band but it’s still
very effective during the contests. Ran through the first evening and headed to
80 ran there for a bit, strong EU and that 1000′ bev is just incredible.

By 0700z we were being called by VK/JA and we ended up running endless
VK/ZL/JA/BY/HL! Lots of VK#AAAA calls, I think the 4 letter suffix is Low
power? Wow!

20m opened up early about 4:30-5:00am but we didn’t want to move with the great
rate on 40 into AS/PAC so we stayed racking up the 6 pointers well into daylight
then moved on to 20m. We were not there long and 15 opened and did it open! 15m
was our money band by far this weekend. By late afternoon on Saturday we had
the top 5ele of the triple stack to AS and the bottom 2 at EU and we had q’s
from every continent all at the same time! A SV would call followed by a VK
then a JA then a BY it was nuts! The Asian opening was like nothing I have ever
experienced before. We actually “ran” BY’s, ?? I remember working a JA that was
30 over and asking him if he was LP or SP because we were getting the same sig
strengths in both directions and he replied and said “Both, I am on a dipole”
ha ha, yea conditions were good! As matter of fact looking over the SH5 log we
worked twice as many AS stations as SA stations!

One downer was late morning on Saturday when I was on the 2nd radio (K3) and
got too close to the run run radio and POP! 30db of attenuation. Overloaded the
front end, going to have to debug that this week I scrambled, grabbed the
spare 1000MP, hooked it up got the N1MM to do all the right stuff and back to
operating again! Rule #1 in contesting, have backup equipment!!!

I forget what time it was but Ray posted our score to getscores.org, well I
don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing because then AK1W posted and
I knew we were in trouble. New goal, STAY AHEAD OF AK1W! Congrats to K5ZD and
W1UJ for really keeping us on our game, it was really a thrill! Comparing the
band breakdowns were were neck and neck!

I had the WPX website up looking over the records (great website BTW) and at
the 36 hour mark we had 16mil. We could not believe it! It was a real honor to
pass K1LZ’s incredible score! No way would that have ever been possible without
these incredible condx.

Once we reached over 3000 q’s it was a real struggle keeping the rate over
100/hr we had a LOT of repeats on the exchange and it was even worse when we
were giving out 4000+ serial numbers. That really slammed our rate but I
suppose that is bittersweet

Post-Game:

19% of our log was US and 81% was outside US. I think this is were the magic
happened. The times when we should have been on 40m with 6 pointers we were on
15/20 and working AS at a rate 2-3 times higher then what we could do on 40m
with the QRM so that made up for it. We shared the run radio 50/50 between ops
and really pushed each other during the whole test.

Also, like Krassy mentioned in his post, the LID patrol was really out this
weekend, I am not sure what is going on but we had some LID record our CQ and
play over and over, I think actually I want that to happen more often because I
was able to stop TXing and work all the guys responding to his CQ! Also, whats
the deal with guys showing right on top of you and calling CQ? I mean really
guys, seriously, we know you can hear us! Luckily that is short lived since we
just keep running over the top of you.

Additionally, thanks to all the EU/JA contesters, I think without you guys this
hobby would just about be dead. WRTC is a fantastic idea. I’m with K1LZ on
this, we need to do something here in US to increase contesting here in the
states, ideas?

8pm rolled around we were so hopped up on adrenaline we were bouncing off the
walls. Being up for 60+ hours with about 1 hour of total rest you would think
otherwise but that was not the case. We packed the truck, locked up the house
and Lori drove the 2 hours home. As soon as we sat in the truck we were out! I
never even remember being on the Taconic Parkway! Also there is nothing like
the sleep you get when the contest is over! Wow!

There are some really BIG scores being posted and looks like lots of new
records being set. There are big plans for the contest station at W2RE this
summer and we are really looking forward to the Fall contest season!

Thanks to Ray W2RE and Lori KB2HZI for a great memorable weekend. Always a
pleasure operating with you.

See you guys in WPX CW in 2 months!

73 de Lee
WW2DX.com
W2RE.com

SH5 Breakdown:

http://www.ww2dx.com/Contests/2011-WPX-SSB-WW2DX/index.htm

                   ARRL DX Contest, SSB

Call: W2RE
Operator(s): W2RE
Station: W2RE

Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: Summit, NY
Operating Time (hrs): 45
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   51    40
   80:  213    71
   40:  563    90
   20: 1185   106
   15: 1390   107
   10:  165    73
-------------------
Total: 3567   487  Total Score = 5,211,387

The new Qth here in Summit,NY really works well! The station is still
in the very early stages of the build. Currently have 3 towers up. I
have scheduled another 3 towers to be erected in Summer 2011. The
location is @ 2100ft ASL and its very quiet on all the bands, which
helps to hear the weak guys! However, as I write this post the weather
is a major problem! I have about a foot of snow on the ground from last
night! The wind is blowing as usual, its like a blizzard! 

The contest was a pleasure to operate, the bands seemed to be excellent,
Here is my band summary.

10M: Nice Europe run for 1 hour on Sunday. The highlight was being called
by 4S7BRG

15M: Best band and the Europeans were really loud! Nice JA run on Sat
night.

20M: I spent very little time on 20 this year as 15M was so good, but
the band was alive and I had my best hours of the contest on the band.
back to back 200+ hours @ 1800-2000Z Sat. I took a screen shot of the rate
and will post later on the site.

40M: The band was down and found the rates to be real slow.
I normally rake in 1000 Q's on this band, but seemed punked and couldnt
get anything going.

80M: The band was quiet but activity was slightly down prior to past years.

160M: The band was down in activity, but did work a good amount of mults.

Now, how do I get home? My main home qth is in SE NY, which is normally
a 2hr drive. However, there is a foot of snow on the ground from last
night's storm! I drove up in my honda civic, should have drove up in
4X4! This storm was not forecasted to dump snow! but rain!
I have to be home this afternoon for a Doc's appointment! This will be
a challenge, actually this may be harder challenge than keeping a freq
this past weekend!  73, Ray W2RE

ARRL DX Contest, CW

Call: W2RE
Operator(s): W2RE WW2DX AB3CX
Station: W2RE

Class: M/S HP
QTH: Summit, NY
Operating Time (hrs): 16

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
——————-
160:   39    35
80:  203    73
40:  483    80
20:  360    73
15:  427    69
10:   37    36
——————-
Total: 1549   366  Total Score = 1,699,704

Club: HVCDX

Comments:

Mother Nature got us good! 80mph winds gusts and sustained winds of 40-50mph
caused major destruction to the town of Summit NY 2100ft ASL. Multiple
electrical poles snapped in half. I had never seen anything like it before?
White out conditions from the blowing snow. Shame on me for not having a backup
generator. We were in a great 15m run when the power went out. Very little
damage to antennas, as some wires broke and fixed yagis turned off path but
were easily fixed in 10F temps today.
Thanks to Lee WW2DX and Mike AB3CX dealing with the disappointment of not
finishing a great start.

CU in ARRLDX SSB

Ray W2RE
www.w2re.com

Call: W2RE
Operator(s): W2RE, WW2DX, AB3CX
Station: W2RE

Class: M/S HP
QTH: FN22
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:  149    19       80
   80:  586    23      103
   40: 1379    39      139
   20: 1202    37      137
   15:  869    32      129
   10:   65    20       65
------------------------------
Total: 4250   170      653  Total Score = 10,163,227

Club: Frankford Radio Club

Comments:

I am not sure if I will ever see these types of conditions again in my lifetime.
I truly hope I am wrong.

Since the M/S during SSCW was so much fun we figured we would give it a whirl
in CQWWCW. I have to say the one thing I really like about M/S is you can get
in nap's! 

We had a few bugs early on in the test Friday evening into Saturday when the 3
ele 40 had intermittent high SWR then we had the 80m vertical go dead only to
find the barrel connector had some corrosion and luckily that was an easy fix.
Running on the 80m dipole @ 100' seemed to do just fine in the meantime. Also,
being at 2100 ASL in the Catskills has its challenges, for the duration of the
test we had gusts to 50mph and blizzard snow! It's not fun leaving a nice warm
shack heated with 8877's to head out into pitch black night and dealing with
mother nature. We had a couple hours before the test to rig the shack from a
S/O to a M/S and basically we ran on the 1000mp and chased mults on the K3.
Other then the antenna bumps all the equipment worked flawlessly. 

Friday's start was not the greatest for us, the first hour was not great at
all, we just had a really hard time getting situated and finding our comfort
zone, I think our first hour was less then 60 q's. Soon after that we settled
in and the rate quickly jumped. At the first 24 hour mark we were 10 q's short
of 2400 q's so we were very happy with a 100/hr average for the first 24. 

Some neat memories:

1. 1:30pm on Friday, Ray finished up a 800' beverage so we decided to play
around, we almost could not believe it when we heard HB9LCW S2 on 3507 at
1:30pm, then we head to 160 and hear EU at 2pm! At the time we figured it was
the best beverage in the world not knowing that these incredible low band
conditions have already started.

2. Running on 160, well you all know 160 was just unreal. It sounded more like
20m then anything, I mean 4L0A S9? TA3 S9? !! We decided to run and we did! I
think we got about 60 q's in about 45 minutes.

3. JA's REAL LOUD, Saturday morning Mike had a couple JA's call while he was
running EU, he decided to swing to JA and it was just endless! This happened
again Sunday late afternoon, lots of nice AS mults.

4. 10m, 10 was not "open" in the sense 1 watt works the world but there was a
lot of great DX at the noise floor and being up in the mountains there is NO
QRN, sometimes you think how did I work that guy and how did he hear me! Stuff
from ST2, ZL8 to G6 in log! Very cool!

Our high hopes goal was 4K q's and 6m points, and when we reached the 6m mark
with 12 hours to go we realized that the far fetched 4K q goal was well in
reach! Still can't believe the great scores we see coming in. Lots of records
being broken, something tells me these will stick around for a while. Congrats
to the KC1XX team and K1LZ team, FB!

As others have mentioned, DX stations not IDing for minutes is not cool. Also
crowd control does not exist when fresh meat shows up on the map. I really love
it when I hear M/M stations calling over and over and over and over even while
the DX is sending his report to the current station is just plain LIDish. 

Some stats:

DL makes up 14% of the total q's - Wow

Best 30min was 208q's
Best 60min was 199q's
Best 120min was 177 q's
We worked 1048 q's in grid square JO - Is that possible?

CW just rules.

Thanks to W2RE for inviting myself and Mike up to operate his newly built QTH.
Things can only improve from this point forward. There are still 3 more tower
bases to be poured on the initial building permit. I guess once those are in he
goes and gets another building permit   Thanks to Lori KB2HZI for keeping us
well fed over the weekend! Thanks to Mike AB3CX for his mad CW skilz! Really a
great op and a really cool guy to operate with.

If you want to check out some pics and info of the station check it out here:

http://www.W2RE.com

73 see you guys in the next one!

Lee - WW2DX