TRIO-Ops @ NX6T take 2nd place for JIDX SSB

Human Insights Group business brought me to So. California, allowing me to first rendezvous with the NX6T group at "NashVille" in Fallbrook (900' up) for the 2016 JIDX SSB contest.  In both phone & CW JIDX contests, NX6T has won several 1st place world-wide plaques; several of which I have been a part of.

For the 2016 JIDX Cw contest, I ran single-op from W7AYT's QTH (SF bay area), submitting the log as a 1st-place 40-meter single-band entry, because upper band condx. were so poor.


During this November event, the space WX numbers continued to be horrible extending from the last 3 weeks; surprising for such a low SFI.

For NX6T, 10 meters never materialized.  The only thing I saw on the DX Map were propagation paths to Oceania & South America, with no opening to Asia (or even North America).

N6KI (Left) and KK6NON

While I caught up on my sleep before the night shift, N6KI (Dennis) began operations on 40 meters promptly at 07:00z,  Thanks to an early Asia opening, Dennis managed nearly 120 QSOs before rousting me out of bed for my operating stint at 1:30 am (09:30z).

Until 40 meters faded out at 14:00z I made 160 QSOs on 40 interspersed with a handful on 80 meters.
20 meters never materialized until around 22:00z when Levi KK6NON made the scene to work a bunch of them. 

C-31 Yagi + MAG-loop antenna for 80/160

Between Levi running frequencies and Dennis working stray JA stations, 119 QSOs made it into the log on 15 meters.  During their operation I made a short YouTube video (View here) in addition to taking pics of the overall operation.
After 15 meters closed, 20 meters never materialized to Asia as the MUF dropped towards 40 meters.  N6KI took over at 06:30z finding a JA opening shortly after 07:00z,   When I took over at 09:30z only another 20 QSOs had found their way to the log.

Taking the final shift I added another 70 QSOs to the log, including another handful on 75 meters.  We were down to 2 prefectures left to make a prefecture sweep: #29 (Fukui) & #47 (Okinawa).  In the last 90 minutes I was surprised by calls from three Okinawa stations; a JS6, and a JR6 followed by another JS6 station.   Lacking any plentiful JA9 stations, prefecture #29 never materialized - maybe next year.

In addition to poor 75-meter propagation, I believe one of main reasons for poor JA turnout on 75 meters has to do with the IDIOTIC band plan JA amateurs must put up with.

While we were ahead of the QSO count from last year's contest for the 1st half of the event, lacking sufficient band opening time on 15 meters resulted in 150 QSOs less than the 2015 event. Our 2016 score was about 60% of last year's 1st-place plaque winning event.

When it was all over K3EST+N6RO produced over 1,000 QSOs for a definitive 1st place, giving us 2nd place significantly ahead of our usual nemesis the dual-op HG7T.

While we had high hopes for another 1st place, we had not counted on the gang @ N6RO to run multi-op; in years past K3EST had been running SOAB.
Nevertheless, NX6T's gang of 3 made an amazing showing, considering the atmospheric conditions available to us.

QRM-wise, 40 meters produced a number of intentional-QRM sources, including a "data cranker" on 7.152 at 11:18z Saturday followed by a continuous RTTY source on 7.171.71 at 13:00z.

I noticed that occasionally the RTTY would stop; ostensibly to "listen".  Moving down to 7170.70 solved that problem.  While looking for JA's on 75 meters I again encountered the Chinese military station M8JF calling for Russian RIS9 on 3777.84 at 13:33z.  on 40 meters, the Russian M & K beacons were in full force on 7.040, altho luckily we were not plagued by any OTH radar signals.

Stations #2 & #3

At 11:18z Sunday morning while calling CQ JIDX on 3749.49 I was bombarded with RTTY QRM that came and went.

It came back at 11:25z disappearing at 11:30z just in time to be informed by a weak station that a traffic net was about to start on 3.750 and would I please QSY.

I stopped transmitting to listen and never heard any traffic net stations so I am not sure what that was all about.


I abandoned 75 meters and headed back to 7152.52.
At 12:45z the intentional QRM again materialized so I slid down to 7151.51 to finish the contest,
just shy of 500 QSOs for 48k points.

Did YOU work the JIDX SSB contest?

How many Japanese prefectures are in YOUR log?