Team W6H scores another 1st-place worldwide for 2013 JIDX SSB

This last weekend's JIDX was an interesting challenge in many ways.  Registering the W6H callsign (In honor of the late Hiro - JA1FRQ) I again teamed with the NX6T group in Fallbrook Ca.  (also known as "Nashville" in honor of Nash W6HCD who passed this year).  At 1,000' elevation, physically, Nashville is ideally suited for contesting, with the exception of a nearby noise source in the direction that we point the antennas for the best path to Japan.

This contest season team leader Dennis (N6KI) has been experimenting with a multi-transmitter setup which qualifies under multi-single category.   Three radios (2 K3's and 1 TS-590) were put together allowing a "run" station (a K3), a mult station (another K3) and a search/pounce station (the TS-590) interlocked with the run station so only one or the other can transmit.  With this configuration we managed 668 Q's (versus 861 in 2012), but evidently enough to have locked up 1st-place world wide for the MOP category - at least according to the 3830 Scores website.  Ironically there were single-OP stations (both Russian) with way more QSOs than we had.

In this run of the JIDX there were indeed a dearth of Japanese stations participating; one only has to look at the highest QSO number on any individual band to figure that one.  This is consistent with my beef that Asian stations don't participate in their own contests.   While we managed to work prefectures 1 - 47, 48, 49 & 50 were not active in their own contest; altho JD1 WAS active in the WAE RTTY contest (also running during the weekend) - wassup with that ??!!??

An updated version of the WQ6X Prefecture Tracker software gives us the breakdown of the 47 prefectures worked by W6H throughout the contest weekend.

80 meter participation on the part of the Japanese was very poor - we only worked 20 stations; most of them on Sunday morning.  This year we had no 160 meter antenna so we missed out on whoever was there.  40 meters was THE band this year with about 45% of the Q's made there; mostly by the run station, with a few snuck in by the S/P station.

While the solar flux remained a medium all weekend with no real storms (until after the contest) 10 meters was somewhat of a disappointment.  20 meters to Japan has been quite a disappointment in recent years from this location, so it was up to 40 & 15 meters to carry the contest forward; with 10, 20 & 80 rounding out the activity.

We had a team of 9 operators with varying degrees of experience, which made for an interesting operation. My job was to operate a little bit throughout the weekend, on every shift within the 30 hour period.

Fresh off the high of receiving the 1st-place MOP plaque from last year's JIDX, we plowed into this contest with plenty of focus and enthusiasm - helpful when we ran into equipment glitches throughout the weekend.  While running a pair of ACOM 2000 amplifiers has its advantages, free-floating RF in the shack is not one of them.

While we made a lot of mistakes and encountered many technical difficulties it would seem that W6H will again earn a MOP 1st place plaque for 2013.

We received the plaque on Ground Hog day (Feb 2) in 2015.

Did you play in the JIDX?  How did your operation turn out?