CQ WW WPX Contest 2013 in QRP SSB – I did it ! True story !

It is Sunday afternoon and as I am witting this, the contest is not over yet, but I am officially QRT.The fact that it will be published on April’s 1st does not make it a joke!!!

It was the first time in my ham “career” I participated in this huge contest and it was exciting to say the least! I have been dreaming to do a WPX contest in QRP SSB for years, but knowing the size of it, I knew it would bring a lot of frustration, so I always put it off for “next year”. But this year was the year! I would do it: Single operator 20m QRP SSB.

My station is quite simple and not big-contest-capable. I have a single 20m dipole @15m high beaming to Central Europe, so this is a big disadvantage in a(ny) contest. I do not have another antenna and I am not 100% sure where the actual nulls of the dipole point.

I got prepared regarding the propagation and had studied the expected coverage and reliability of my setup in order to adjust my operating times in advance. I knew that when the band would be wide open, there would be chaos and my signal would be lost in the QRM. I needed the best fit between adequate propagation and low QRM so it was clear that most of the job should be done early in the morning…

On Friday afternoon I did a last check on my antenna and adjusted my power to 5W max using my scope and 2 different power meters just to be sure. I fired up one of my other HF rigs to check my transmission audio (with audio processor enabled) and I was quite ready. It is the right place to say that I used my TS-140S because Murphy stroke me. One of my TS-850S was hit by the “bad display unit capacitor” problem earlier this week and the display went off, my other TS-850S for a strange reason was extremely noisy on receive and my FT-890 ,which I wanted to use, was giving me a very bad and distorted modulation!What the heck!!!I decided to go with the TS-140!

I set my goals to realistic levels so that it would be clear when to stop and when to try a bit more. My goal settings were as follows:

– step 1:  20 QSOs or 100 points  (whichever comes first)

– step 2: 50 QSOs or 500 points  (whichever comes first)

I was determined to not quit unless the first goal is reached, no matter what, and I would fight for the second as long as there would be hope.

On day 1, I started really early at 05:00 UTC and checked the band up and down taking notes on the stations and their strength. There were some high points stations (7Z1’s, HZ1’s,A51,A60,A71) and a lot Eastern Europeans. They were not very strong but they were getting louder minute by minute. At first I tried the high points stations as I was afraid that I would lose them first. There was no luck with them, so I decided to follow the prescribed tactic: work the strongest stations first.

The first one , RU1A, came at 05:48 UTC at the first call ! I was more than excited!!! During the next 15 minutes I got two more stations , ES9C and OH5Z, again on the first call.What a great start! Then, the rate returned to the expected low which made me flirt with frustration most of the time. It required a looooooot of tries to break through the QRM which developed quite quickly. In average it took me 25 minutes of trying for a new QSO, and as the time passed by, it required  much more effort and the time between QSO’s reached 50m at some points. What made it worse, was the fact that I underestimated the value of a voice keyer (again!) and it was a nightmare to repeat my callsign again and again and again..

After 2 hours I had 9 QSO’s in log and I was only one QSO away to complete my first goal. It felt like time had stopped! There was over an hour without success and I needed it in order to make a break. I cannot describe the feeling when the next station was logged.Happiness and relief at the same time.It felt like I won the lottery and I do not have to work again – ever! I took a small break to relax.My head was buzzing from the noise for minutes after I took off my headset.

When I came back, one hour later, the band was crazy! Absolute madness! I worked very hard to add 2 more QSO’s on the next 2 hours and then I took a long break (and a short nap) because I was feeling exhausted. In the afternoon, around 15:00 UTC, I realized what it means to be in a big contest! All the stations I had previously noted in my notepad where much more louder now.Maybe the conditions were better or they switched on their Kwatts. Most of them were peaking at S9+20db.Usually there were 3 or 4 stations within the receiver passband, all of them at S9+ , and copying was quite difficult.My TS-140 was suffering and so was my brain.Under these  circumstances it is understandable why the other end could not copy my 5W signal, no matter how hard I tried. It was just impossible to get through.’This’ was the core of the contest and I was lucky that I started early in the morning because now there was no chance. For the next 3 hours my morale was going away and gradually reached the ground! Aside from an Italian station who grabbed my prefix, nothing else happened!

I was done for the first day. I decided to get some rest and prepared for day 2.

Conditions on day 2 seemed to me a bit worse (or I was tired enough!). Started a bit earlier at 03:50 UTC and found the same high points stations. Again, no luck with them, as they were now attracting a lot of stations, against whom I did not have any chance no matter how ‘perfectly’ I tried to time my calls.Nope!Nada! However, I was positive that I would grab some more and maybe I could reach goal #2. Unfortunately, the QRM peaked very fast and that made it the most frustrating period of the contest.All the stations that copied me, was getting some part of my call but not all of it.They were patient enough but at the end they were giving up. I fully understand them,though.My best luck was two Italian stations, on whom I insisted as they seemed to be the best catch, because they were at the end of the band (were it was really quiet) and they were geographically near me (which I hoped that would help).

After 6 hours I decided to QRT as I did not have any more energy to go on. In total, I managed to stay on air about 14 hours, made 14 QSO’s with a total (claimed) score of 224 points. I am very satisfied with the overall result.

“What’s the point?” someone may ask.”Why should you put your self into this torture?”…

Although I knew that using a modest station and QRP SSB would not get me very far, I wanted to put my operating skills under test and see where I stand. It was a personal challenge that could only have a positive result.I wanted to see how I can compete against others using all the operating tricks I know and maybe learn some more on the fly.I realized that someone needs to adapt very fast and develop new skills and tactics in order to survive, and a contest is the best place to learn this.There were  times that I had to change phonetics to get through, or modify the accent depending on the DX station. This proves the most effective technique as for example the German stations were grabbing ‘Germany’ easier than ‘Golf’  and French stations liked better the sound of “zouliet” instead of “Juliet” or “Japan”. I paid attention in order to quickly understand the operating pattern of the other station, on which direction he hears and deduce whether  he is using a beam or some other antenna so that I can come back later.

I always tried to put my self on the other operator’s shoes and imagine what he had to deal with. I slowly learned to adjust the speed and timing of my call in order to fill a possible momentary gap on the other side. This worked best most of the times, but the gaps were too short for the other side to copy my full callsign. Still, it was something I learned and used for the first time and I will master it in the future.

The most important thing this contest put under test was my discipline. I am proud that I did not have to think at all about operating procedures. I always transmitted my full callsign only, and transmit it only once. I never transmitted until I hear the other station calling ‘QRZ’ or ‘CQ CONTEST’. I never considered increasing the power even when I was completely frustrated and disappointed and I was always monitoring my output power not to exceed 5W.Playing by the rules is of the utmost importance.

The most exciting thing about contesting in QRP SSB is that it forces you to make the most of every little detail and take advantage of every opportunity.It keeps all your senses alerted and activates your survival instincts.It is like being an ant and try to walk along a running elephant herd and stay alive.

It was a great experience and I will definitely do it again!

73,Nick,SV1DJG

A bright light in the darkness!

During the last days I was in big frustration reading more antenna theory than my brain could ever  afford! I was looking into the details that I had possibly missed or overlooked all these years, and I think I am getting the big picture piece by piece (I will come back to this at a later post!).

Today I decided to take a break from reading and turn on my rig and check some things.  I was a bit dissapointed because all bands above 30m were covered by noise . I switched to 40m and heard a contest running but I did not get into the trouble of listening, I was not so in the mood.

After a while I decided to listen a bit on 40m because it was the quitest band I could use (only 3 S-units of noise)  and I heard a station hidden in the noise calling CQ. I had to hear a lot of calls to catch the prefix, and a lot more to get the whole callsign because it was just below the noise. It turned out to be JS3CTQ, a station from Japan! I was happily shocked! My next steps were to immediately hook up my PC to the rig and record the next QSOs because I did not know if this would last for long!

I moved a bit up and heard another station deep in the noise calling CQ.  I suspected this was a Japanese station also, so I kept monitoring until I got his callsign. It was indeed a Japanese station, JO1LVZ ! I stayed there longer and I noticed that a lot of stations were calling him, and he could easily get Italian and Greek stations, but a station from Poland was trying for over 20 minutes without luck. At that point JO1LVZ  was lost and I got back to JS3CTQ. Something magical had happened! The noise had dropped a bit and also the station was now heard at S6!

That was amazing! I could not believe that I was hearing a station from Japan so loud , the same time I am trying to understand why I could not hear any Japanese stations during the CQ WW DX contest!

This small experience indicates that it is possible for my setup to catch some signals from Japan (which possibly come from stations running KW on multi-element beams).

Some 20 minutes later I completely lost him (maybe he turned his beam) and I was so excited that I had to quit to prevent a stroke! Just before I turn off my rig a new station JH4UYB pops-up at about S7 !!!

OK, this is too much for me for just one day, I need to take a break !

73, SV3DJG

2009 CQ WW DX Contest – The after math

All these days I was trying to analyse the results of my operation. All I want is to know the capabilities of my station and how to improve it.

A tool to get my log and present it in various forms for analysis was required, so I did the usual web search, but I found only one tool that could help. Unfortunately, it is restricted to US regions only. I also tried to import my log to Ham Radio Deluxe because it has a mapping feature, but after some tries, I realized that in order this to work, each callsign needs to have the grid locator information. I could not get this info for all the callsigns of interest so I had to do it my way ! (note: there is available the Ham Radio Deluxe Utilities that can poll the QRZ.com database and resolve this info, but you need a subscription for this).

My solution was  to develop a small application that would analyse my data in any way I want.  It was a weekend project to implement the basic functionality required, that is, find the maximum distance worked as well as display the DXCC entities worked on a map.

An overview of the DXCC entities heard is shown on the map below (each entity is displayed only once)

Overview of DXCC countries heard worldwide

The most distant station heard was PJ4K in Netherlands Antilles, at a distance of 9425,4 km.

The main distribution is over Europe, with no African stations at all, something that I did not expect, since I have heard lots of stations from Africa with the same setup.

Overview of DXCC countries heard in Europe and Africa

A close-up of the European map shows that (at least) almost all Europe is within my reach

Detailed view of European DXCC countries  heard

Most of the DXCC countries heard were expected because previous coverage analysis showed that they are well within my station capablities for this part of the solar cycle. But, there is a big gap to the east despite the predictions of VOACAP.As I said before, lots of Chinese and Japanese stations were on air but I could not hear them.

I can think of two main reasons for this gap. The first one is that the placement of my antenna is so bad, with its proximity to the building and to various metal objects affecting the radiation pattern more than I had estimated. The other reason is that the stations were burried deep into the noise, which was  quite significant . I believe that these two reasons are related and by improving my antenna the situation will change dramatically!

With this data in hand, the next target is my antenna. I allready have some things in mind that I would like to try.

Despite the fact that I did not have any luck with US and AS, the analysis showed that a total of 141 DXCC countries were heard! This by itself  leaves room for a lot of  fun!

73, SV3DJG