Wednesday, December 31, 2025

WQ6X Wings a LaTe NiTe SP-160 Contest

Overall, the Stew Perry (SP-160) contest is truly a weird affair, with the operational benefit
of eliminating the obligatory "5-9-9" (or "5NN"), sending JUST our grid square designator. 
Unlike other contests, the SP-160 GiGs work their way to the West, starting in Central Europe. 
Approx. 5 hours in, the East Coast fades into the game and more-or-less 3 hours later, the West
Coast is finally able to join in.

This weekend, a family Christmas gathering kept me out of the OP-chair until ~06:30z.  A passible remote was cobbled together on the dining room table in So. San Jose to run STN-1 at WA6TQT in Anza.  The 160-meter antenna in Anza is a "TRI-Square" (3 full-size 160 dipoles atop 100' high towers).  Unfortunately, one of the phasing cables has a severed coax braid, disrupting the radiation pattern - we can never be sure which direction the signal is favoring.  Nevertheless, log entries were made for W7, VE7, VE3, K1, PJ2 & ZF9 and most points due east from Southern California.

Relatively noisy band conditions prompted me to run 90-watts instead of QRP (as has been done
in the past).  With the SFI slowly rising to 160+, 160-meter band condx. were a compromise at best.  DEEP fading required NUMEROUS repeats - the logging program databases don't normally document the grid square.

In the SP-160 contests, points are scored based on grid square separation distance, however AFTER the contest, the log checking software matches the QSOs and awards bonus points for working LP and QRP systems.  Technically, the scores submitted to 3830 Scores are relatively meaningless. 
"6 months" from now when they publish the actual results, we will know who scored in what place.

Nearly nodding off several times around 10:45z, as the east coast stations came back into the game, the increase in signals kept me going until the band seemed to just fade away around 12:45z.  While the 111 QSOs logged in no way were extraordinary, the nearly 7-hours spent in the OP-chair was time well utilized.


To understand which direction the signal was favoring will come down to comparing the RBN spots
to the actually logged QSOs.  This info will enable documenting the "study" I have been doing to understand the "nuances" of utilizing a crippled antenna.

DiD YOU work the Stew Perry 160-meter contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR Log?


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