WQ6X Dabbles in the King-of-Spain and Speech Evaluation Contests

This contest weekend, two of my FAVorite activities (Radiosport and Toastmasters)

conducted competitions; one worldwide and one local to Northern California.

• For Radiosport: The King of Spain Contest (K-o-S).
• For Toastmasters: The District 57 (D-57) Speech Evaluation Contest.

In preparation for this weekend's King-of-Spain contest, I did a "Blast from the Past"
look back at previous involvement in the King of Spain contest, coming up with:

• [x] - 2016 - 7 QSOs made running SO40
• [x] - 2017 - 47 QSOs made running SO40
• [x] - 2018 - 58 QSOs made running SOAB
• [x] - 2019 - 51 QSOs made running SOAB

Radiosport-wise, this weekend's goal was to run the K-o-S contest while playing around in Kazakhstan's UNDX contest - beginning with listening for any "UN" activity on 40 meters. 
As it turned out, no "UN stations were heard throughout the weekend; and, no Kazakh
spots ever made it to the bandmap in Fallbrook.  An upside to this weekend was the
reintroduction of an Autek QF-1A filter pair for effective implementation of Stereo Cw.

Replacement for the UNDX GiG came in the form of the newly created HamVention QSO Party (HQP, HV, or HVQP - whichever you prefer) in response to the cancelled Dayton event.  A trip to the N1MM download site was necessary to obtain the User Defined Contest (uDc) file to implement the contest in the N1MM logger software.  Altho the event was mixed-mode, because I was running from Alameda the choice was made to run the GiG as Cw only.

The HV QSO party is unique in that no log submission is required; only a score posted to 3830Scores,Com.  Based on the submitted scores, WQ6X took 2nd place for California - below Hank's W6SX score from Mammoth Lakes.  The scored tied Valerie's NV9L entry, except she

ran all Ssb and I ran all Cw; I normally experience her blazing Cw in radio contests, but evidently,

not this one.  The write up about this GiG can be found at:
https://wwrof.org/hamvention-qso-party/
During this contest, calls were received from numerous stations who obviously had not read the rules; thinking it was a state QSO party, they would send "599 CA" (for example) - I would enter them in the log as "2020".

Thanks to K3LR, the above custom certificate was made available.

Being only a 12 hour event, by 00:00z (5pm PDT), the QSO party was over and it was

time to put the rest of my time into the 12 hours remaining in the King of Spain contest.

[CLICK HERE] to see the rules for the event.

 

For me, the BiG surprise was an opening to Europe (beginning with Spain) around 01:00z (6pm PDT).  I spent several hours running 7009.09.  One of the more amazing callers was EA9AZ/QRP @02:15z.  Another surprise caller was M0TDW. 

By 07:00 new callers in the contest had all but disappeared.  Hoping for an Asian connection,
the Shorty-40 yagi was turned to 320-degrees.  Tuning to ~7.039, the Russian "K" and "M" beacons
were heard.  Similar but different to last weekend, the K-beacon wasn't transmitting "K" repeatedly; instead, the transmission was "K K K K T T".  Last weekend it was:  "K K K T T T".   I have no idea why the transmission content has changed for a 2nd time.  Continued listening may provide a clue.

When it was all over it became readily apparent that in this year's K-o-S contest WQ6X made more QSOs in this single-event than all previous K-o-S operations combined.  While other stations easily surpassed this weekend's score, for me, it was a notable accomplishment. 

Based on the 3830 Stats, WQ6X took 2nd place for CA (behind W6SX in Mammoth Lakes)
in the HamVention QSO party and 1st-place for CA in the King-of-Spain contest - not bad for
just screwing around and winging it as I go.

Did YOU work the HVQP or K-o-S contests?

Is WQ6X in YOUR Log?