Being my favorite domestic radiosport contest, Sweepstakes (SS) has found me operating from a number of different locations, including SB in Ojai (over a dozen times), Ohio twice (Cincinnati and Brookdale), Montana (MT) into Idaho (ID) and of course B-i-C in Fallbrook (SDG) as well as remotely. In recent years most operations have been from Concord in Northern California (EB section) and even a dual-OP (remote to NX6T and local as WQ6X). A pre-contest write-up of Sweepstakes was made last week ([CLICK HERE] to read it).
This year promised to be similar but yet different. The goal was to somehow operate dual-OP from Fallbrook (SDG) and Concord (EB). Because NX6T (as an operating entity) was "dark", that made both stations available to be utilized in some way.
Time on Friday was spent researching past Sweepstakes results for Single-OP operations in the
East Bay (EB) and San Diego (SDG) sections. with the goal of making sections wins for BOTH Northern and Southern California regions. In order to make this all work, a last-minute registration
of the W6K callsign was made; which will make the 26th usage of W6K made by WQ6X.
Sweepstakes was started as W6K for the 1st hour to "find the Sweepstakes groove" before moving
to STN-2 as WQ6X. K4RB ran most of the afternoon on 20 meters from STN-1 leaving me to work
15 meters as long as it would hold up, after which a shift was made to 40-meters. Luckily, in recent months 40-meters has been opening to the east coast early to mid afternoons.
The weird part of running 15 meters was that somehow RFI from STN-1 was causing the auto-tuner
in STN-2's K3 radio to think that there was high-SWR. In the middle of transmitting an exchange
the power would drop to ZERO, requiring a press of the manual-TUNE button to keep on going.
Probably a 1/2 dozen contacts were lost from that; luckily, no multipliers were forfeited. Sunday morning, running 20-meters as K4RB ran on 15 found no RFI problems; one of those anomalies
we'll probably never understand.
Switching to 40-meters presented an interesting problem. K4RB was running the Stepp-IR
for 20-meters which is on the same tower as the 2-el. Shorty-40. In order for the 3-el. Stepp-IR to
be positioned more or less 30-degrees the Shorty-40 was then pointing to 305-degrees (essentially Alaska and Asia). Usually when working Asia I am frustrated when ol' Billy-Bob calls in from the Southeast. For Sweepstakes, Billy-Bob (and his brother Barry) were most welcome. Additionally during that hour many VE's and Midwest stations made it to the log; more or less what I wanted anyway. It was during this period when QRP station VY2ZM (in the newly added PE section)
gave WQ6X a call.
When the choice was made to run low power, because it was an ARRL contest, I was allowed to run up to 150 watts. To do that would have required dialing the K3 back to a few watts in order to power the KPA-1500 amplifier to only 149.49 watts like we did back in 2014 in the RTTY/RU contest running as WP2/WQ6X. Because this would've created an increase in shack temperature, a signal increase of barely 4db was not worth all the hassle.
Feeling-wise, it would seem that the level of participation actually INCREASED this year over 2019. What were in the past "rare" sections were this year quite well represented. There were multiple NE, VT, NH, WV and NNY sections. Still lacking were ND, SC, EWA and DE. For Canada, NL and PE were readily available if you looked long enough.
Of course, the DIFFICULT section to work was NT. I saw many false spots for NT; then late Sunday afternoon VY1OC showed up on 40-meters and was IMMEDIATELY barraged by a flood of unruly callers who knew how to transmit but NoT how to listen. At one point I heard him send "6X?" and before I could press F4 ("WQ6X") a barrage of W4 & W5 stations covered me up. Eventually it got
so out of hand that the operator gave up and shut it down. It would seem that less than 75 stations made it to his log. If stations would learn to STFU and follow the VY1's directions we would've ALL
had NT in our logs. Lacking NT, WQ6X worked 83 out of 84 sections missing a clean sweep.
Late Sunday afternoon, K4RB wrapped it up on STN-1 and turned the station over to N6KI to
put 271 QSOs into his log. Dennis and I swapped bands frequently, giving us both a chance
to make November Sweepstakes "one more for the log".
When it was all over, both logs were filed with the ARRL Sweepstakes log submission
page as well as scores posted to the 3830 Scores website - it ain't over until the "paperwork"
is finished.
Based on the 3830 Scores website, it would seem that WQ6X took 1st-place from the San
Diego (SDG) section, 2nd-place for Southwestern Division and 28th-place overall in the SOULP classification. In
East Bay (EB) section, it would seem that W6K took 1st place in the SOULP
classification, 2nd for Pacific Division and 96th-place overall.
DiD YOU work the 2020 November Sweepstakes Cw Contest?
Are WQ6X, K4RB, N6KI or W6K in YOUR LoG?
OCTOBER 2021 NEWS FLASH!!!
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