CQ WW WPX CW M/M (2017)

CQWW WPX Contest, CW

Call: NR4M

Operator(s): YO3JR W7IY KO8SCA K4GMH N3UA N3AIU KN3DEB N2YO KG3V KA4RRU K4GM CE2MVF K7SV NR4M

Station: NR4M

Class: M/M HP

QTH: VA

Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:

  Band  QSOs

------------

   160:   96

    80:  618

    40: 1485

    20: 1891

    15:  560

    10:  216

------------

Total: 4866  Prefixes = 1278  Total Score = 16,602,498

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

As sometime happens with CQWW WPX CW following Hamvention, there was some international flair to the NR4M operation this year. We had Mattieu CE3MVW and Andy YO3JR join us. Add to that KO8SCA, K4GMH, N3UA, CE2MVF, N3AIU, KN3DEB, N2YO, KG3V, KA4RRU, K4GM, W7IY, K7SV and NR4M to round out the list of great ops.

We had an interesting experience with operators. Arnie (Gunner) met Steve about a year ago at a local Mexican restaurant.  As they chatted Steve mentioned ham radio and Arnie said he was a CW op in the Marine Corps. Well maybe a month ago Arnie received his tech ticket and the call KN4DEB (yeah he’s getting some grief about the call!). Arnie showed up at the Goat Farm Saturday afternoon and Steve sat down to get him acquainted with CW contesting. About fifteen minutes later Steve got up and said Arnie was running 'em at 30WPM! Arnie also spent Sunday afternoon under the watchful eye of NR4M on 15, doing a great job. At one point near the end of the contest, when ops tend to get scarce, Arnie was seen (and photographed) wearing TWO sets of phones.  One was for the 15 meter run station and the other was for the 15 mult station.  After the contest, he was asked about this and what prompted him to do that.  He stated something to the effect that 'It seemed like the logical thing to do'.  I think he has a future in contesting...  Part of the point of this is the fact that there are a number of Veterans out there who were CW ops and many of them would probably have the time of their lives doing CW contesting if they knew about it!

Bands started out quite good with decent runs on 40 and 20 and a fair number of Qs on 15 meters the first night. On 80 it was quite apparent that the smaller European stations were not hearing well as it was impossible to get any runs going. Saturday 20 and 15 were fair, but the solar event started showing it’s effects that evening. Early in the evening it appeared that Eur was hearing better on 80 but for us the bands was noisier than Friday night. Sunday began as a slog but slowly improved. Fairly decent short skip made an appearance on

10 which produced a good number of single pointers. Three southern Europeans station were worked on 10 towards the end of the contest. Our score was fairly reduced from last year.

Everyone had a great time. As usual food was great and sleeping accommodations very comfortable (who needs sleep anyway?). Everything held up well with no equipment failures. It doesn’t appear that we experienced any frequency fights and operations were in general very pleasant. With the bands being what they were, there was quite a bit of time for conversation which was enjoyed by all. As usual it was nice listening to ops at other stations with whom we visited at Hamvention.

As is generally the case with WPX, the Memorial Day Holiday made it a bit more difficult to line up operators, but the addition of Mathias, CE2MVF, Adrian, KO8SCA, and Andy, YO3JR, really helped. We have an even worse problem with lining up ops for CQWW CW during the US Thanksgiving weekend. It would be nice if the CQ contest sponsors would give consideration to reversing the weekends of the CQWW CW and CQWW SSB contests as well as the CQWW WPX CW and CQWW WPX SSB each year!

Thanks for the Q's.

Many thanks to Steve and Carolyn for supporting our habit once again!

de Lar, K7SV and the 'Goat Farm gang'