As we while away the days until the ARRL DX CW contest during the coming weekend, there’s a moment to reflect on the Feb. 13-14 WPX RTTY Contest.
Short version: pretty great fun.
A 26.5-hour effort produced my second best-ever result. That’s not too bad considering we’re still at the bottom of the solar cycle. I expect scores in this one will continue to rise every year for the next six or seven years.
On the bands
There was no deep well of DX stations to work from the west coast of North America, but 20M did provide brief weak openings to Europe both mornings — and you had to be up for the first hours of daylight to make use of those openings. By 9 a.m. they the window was pretty much closed.
The best surprise for me was how well the 80M receive loop on ground antenna helped. In this contest, 80M has always been a bit of a disappointment, with what I thought was too few stations going there at night to capitalize on the double-point contacts. For those of us in Canada, that means each US contact is worth four points.
Turns out, the stations have always been there under the noise. The RX loop on ground removed the noise to reveal a whole new layer of stations to work. Result? A 230 percent increase in QSOs on 80M — going from 83 last year to 189 this year!
Here’s the Athena chart of my 80M performance this weekend vs. 2020:
Blue bars are hourly totals for this year, and the blue line shows hourly totals for last year.
Band-by-band breakdown (VA7ST)
Band QSOs Pts WPX Pt/Q
3.5 189 738 81 3.9
7 193 752 68 3.9
14 665 1459 263 2.2
21 124 251 28 2.0
Total 1171 3200 440 2.7
Score : 1,408,000I was disappointed by 40M as there wasn’t much access to Europe and the Japan trans-Pacific path didn’t produce many of those treasured 6-point contacts. 40M has been a difficult band for me ever since the 40M wire quad came down (lightning strike severed the supporting cable) a few years ago.
Summer 2021 will bring renewed focus on improvement for antennas on this vital band. Options include:
- Re-building the fixed-wire reflector/director for the Steppir 40M element
- Re-building the wire 40M 2-element quad
- Putting up a new twin half-square array
- Going with a revamped all-band vertical over a decent radial field
I’ll start with the two easiest — the wire element for the Steppir (creating a low 2-element yagi) as that wire is still out there and needs only one new line through a well-placed fir tree, and revamping the all-band vertical. The quad is a lot of work to raise (needing two new cables through the trees, and the half-square array needs four supports).
Never a dull moment around here. But whatever effort I put in will be well-worth it come next contest season. 40M is indispensable and I’ve short-changed myself there for too long already.
Software and real-time scoreboard
As usual, I used N1MM Logger+ and MMTTY. They worked extremely well, with only one system crash, and a couple of computer hangs (due to a bit of RF locking up the ethernet adapter, not the software).
I also run Athena software to compare my real-time score with any previous year I have in the logger database.
And, to really keep me motivated, I make sure N1MM Logger is sending my real-time score to the online scoreboard. I watch the scoreboard throughout the contest to see how well I am doing compared with others in my category.
Year-over-year scores (VA7ST)
Year Qs WPX Score ----------------------------------- 2021 1171 440 1,408,000 26.5 hrs HP 2020 934 384 1,014,144 22.5 hrs HP 2019 931 353 870,851 24.0 hrs HP 2018 420 196 237,160 19.5 hrs 2017 626 275 424,875 21.5 hrs 2016 845 413 1,038,695 22.5 hrs HP 2015 574 320 504,640 20.0 hrs 2014 1322 534 1,885,554 29.2 hrs HP 2013 1041 466 1,308,994 25.5 hrs 2012 830 373 883,637 26.5 hrs 2011 836 322 806,610 27.5 hrs 2010 921 388 994,056 24.0 hrs 2009 846 335 907,180 27.5 hrs HP 2008 612 258 470,850 21.0 hrs HP 2007 972 420 1,154,160 28.5 hrs HP 2006 702 284 578,792 28.2 hrs 2005 584 264 422,664 2004 225 114 67,009 2003 344 149 147,212
