ARRL DX CW

When I saw how many post-contest blog entries there had been about last weekend's ARRL CW DX contest I was hesitant to add yet another. I enjoyed reading most of them, but after so many you find out that there's only so many ways to say that 15 meters was in great shape (and, boy, it was).

Plus, I kind of think that unless you broke a million points or nearly won the darn thing, it's kind of over-the-top to write a blow by blow summary, as if you had the contest of a lifetime. Most everyone else who would be interested in reading it was right there with you, so they already know how it was, when the bands opened to Europe or Asia, etc. I like reading about station setups and how different equipment performed more than I do about how many new countries someone worked.

What I continue to be impressed with, however, is the return rate of LOTW after an event such as this. As soon as the contest was over, I sent in my cabrillo log to ARRL and also uploaded all 656 QSO's to LOTW. It's less than a week later and I've received 212 confirmations back, for a return rate of 32%. Just goes to show that contesters continue to be above average users of LOTW. My normal return rate runs roughly 16-17%, but seems to be climbing steadily. I've read some other comments supporting this.

There's also an ongoing discussion on the CQ-Contest reflector about stations in the US calling other US stations during the contest. One side says to work them and move on, the other says that you should take the time to correct them or start calling "CQ DX" or "CQ DX test" or some other variant, hoping that you get the point across. Yeah boy. I'm having a real hard time accepting that this is a critical, make or break problem. It does, however, seem typical of the discussions you find there.

In fact, twice during the contest I had this happen to me. I was strictly search and pounce and I had two US stations come back to me with "no US, no US". Well, guess what, I wasn't calling either station. What these guys don't realize sometimes is that a DX station may be calling CQ nearby or on the same frequency. I just moved on rather than waste time.

Like so many CW contests, I started with the FT-1oooMP but switched to the K2 after a couple of hours. I have the 500 and 250 Hz filters installed in the Yaesu but the K2 at 400 Hz just does such a better job. Plus the QSK is no comparison. Late on Sunday when things thinned out I went back to the 1000. Seems to keep things fresh, a change of pace.

No problems at all this time with the WinkeyerUSB. I think I've finally gotten the RF problem licked with some clamp-on ferrite and re-routing the USB cord. Also, I found that switching to the dipole late in the night gave better results on 40 and 80 than the vertical did. Early in the evening it was a different story. Interesting. I continue to be impressed with the hex on 20 and 15, but I'm sure that conditions helped tremendously. Nothing on 10 for me - one measly QSO.

A sign of things to come?

In my last post I posed the question of how good will it get with respect to the recent upswing in sunspot activity. For the past two weeks I've been out of town for work so my first time on the bands was this past weekend. If the activity I encountered on Saturday and Sunday was any indication of how things will be, I'm looking forward to what's in store.

For the first time since some of the major contests I was not only hearing Asia, but many of the stations were almost what you'd call "loud". I'm not used to that at all, considering my hex is only at 35 feet or so and I've always suspected the angle that those stations are hitting me doesn't lend itself well to that low height. That height works fine for Europe and most of Africa, but Asia (outside of JA's) has consistently been a problem for me. Not only to work, but to hear.

At one point, some of the JA's were actually a true S9. And, for the first time, I was hearing China, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines well enough to actually claim I was copying them Q5 and not just able to tell that a station was there in the mud. I didn't try to work any of those stations, I figured why contribute to the QRM? There'll be enough time later on for that.

How good will it get?

There seems to be a growing buzz about the recent increase in sunspot activity. I think I've also heard a collective, "It's about time!", spew forth from hams everywhere. Let's all hope that it isn't just a tease and the sun will instead revert back to holding out on us.

I've been licensed for close to 35 years, but only what you'd call 'active' for probably 5 years. And of those 5 years, 2 of them are the past 2. So, I have no idea what to expect when the sun really ramps up. The first 3 years of that 5 year period was back in the late 70's and, as a young, teenage novice, I barely knew what sunspots were. But best I can come up with, that would've been the upward side of cycle 21. In fact, I did a lot of operating in '78 and '79, which, if the information I found is accurate, sunspots would have averaged between 80 and 120 during that period, eventually reaching much higher.

Considering also that as a novice my only legitimate shot at working significant DX was on 15 meters, I took a look back through some of my old paper logs. Sure enough, I discovered that I'd managed to work a good deal of Europe, South America, and even Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. You can imagine that for a 12 or 13 year old those were really big catches! In my neck of the woods 40 meters was obliterated by foreign broadcast stations and my antenna wouldn't work on 80, so 15 was king for me.

Now that I am older and (presumably) understand things a little more, what's even more amazing is that I worked those stations with a ramshackle vertical placed smack dab against the side of the house and my "grounding system" consisted of a single 4-foot ground rod shared amongst the tv and fm antennas. By the way, yes, I generated lots of TVI, but my folks were awfully good-natured about it. My point is, conditions must have been awfully good for me to have had much of any success.

So, I'm wondering...how good can someone expect things to get? Will 20 meters be open to some part of the world all the time? Will 15 meters be like 20 is now on really good days? Or much, much better? I've only worked a handful of stations on 10 meters, I don't even know what to expect. But when I see country totals from long-time DX'ers on 10 meters, I can't help but find myself wondering, "How good does it get?". Of course, 12 and 17 meters weren't even around back then, so what about those bands? Stands to reason that they'll see a dramatic increase in activity, right? 17 is already one of my favorite bands now.

I know this must probably sound rather silly to operators who have been active through several cycles, they already know what's in store. But for those of us who have never experienced anything but a sunspot minimum, or were too young to really remember or participate in an active period, it's a really exciting time.