WQ6X Wangles a successfully Wonky NAQP CW Contest.

With last weekend's RTTY RU contest safely behind us, it was time to focus our attention on the 1st major CW contest GiG of the new year - NAQP CW.  Similar to other recent CW contests, there two major operating goals to pay attention to.

• Put in more-or-less 8 - 9 hours running WQ6X QRP from the KN6NBT station in Ramona.
• Put in 3-hours on station #2 (STN-2) for NX6T from the WA6TQT super-station in Anza (@4,0000' ASL in the San Bernardino Mountains).

While both goals were accomplished, nasty Space-WX conditions made for a way more difficult operating experience than I was expecting.

A nice beginning for 2o26 is that for the 2nd weekend in a row I was ready to roll well in advance
of the 18:00z starting time.  Usually, after starting a GiG, I discover a number of needed corrections
to the function key macros behind the N1MM+ logging software.  Fortunately, the last NAQP Cw run (in August) left us with everything correctly intact.  For NX6T using DXLog, a number of function key macros were updated on Friday making for a more organized multi-2 operation.

The big caveat this weekend was the spotty internet connections on my end of the operation making
it more tricky to run frequencies.  For NX6T, because we had a bunch of seasoned frequency-running operators, much of my time was spent S&P'ing (especially early on 40-meters) finding new multipliers and putting QSOs in the log sometimes faster than the run frequency operators on STN-1.

The decision to run WQ6X QRP from Ramona was a good one.  The 3-el Stepp-IR and 2-el Shorty-40, along with an inverted Vee for 80-meters (all @55') provided enough directional flexibility to work virtually any station that could be heard, often off the side of the antennas.

In addition to poor Space-WX, some other contest highlights include:

• A noticeably lack of Caribbean stations.  While PY5 and PJ2 are nice contacts,
  they are not multipliers.
• Hearable stations on 80-meters are always lacking on the West coast. 
  I made a first run on 80-meters around 02:30z, finding minimal activity
  on both coasts (and all points in between).
  
• Stereo Cw was an important adjunct in this Cw construct, altho one of the QF-1A filters
  was not properly doing the job and was pre-empted by an MFJ-752b Signal Enhancer.
• There seemed to be a lack of RBN spots for BOTH WQ6X and NX6T. 
  Because self-spotting is currently allowed, that capability was taken advantage of.
  
• Running 100-watts is a challenge for NX6T operators used to running an amplifier,
  altho w/stacked yagi arrays and a 4-square vertical array for 80-meters, the antennas made up for running Low Power (LP).
• Monitoring the contest online scoreboard added some positive tension to WQ6X's
  QRP run.  K5KG was on top of the QRP assisted list the entire run leaving 2nd place
  to alternate between a handful of stations (K4OV, W8MK, KA3MTT, K5NZ & WQ6X).  Eventually the other stations stopped running leaving WQ6X firmly in 2nd place.

When it was all over, WQ6X had surpassed the 300 QRP QSO goal (w/321) taking 2nd-place
for the QRP assisted category, while NX6T logged over 2100 QSOs taking 5th-place overall and
1st-place for the left half of USA.  Between K-indexes of 4 thru 6 and burbbly internet access, the 2o26 NAQP Cw contest was indeed a unique and successful challenge.

DiD YOU work the NAQP Cw contest?

Is WQ6X or NX6T in YOUR Log?