WQ6X RACs Another One up for Canada

The Canada contest is quite unique in that it can happen any day of the week that July 1st
happens to fall; not necessarily a weekend affair.  The 2020 RAC Canada Event happened
on Tuesday-Wednesday this year.

After the fact, I remembered that WQ6X Contest Blog entries have been written about the events
for 2017, 2018 & 2019.  Here is what I had to say about them:
= [x] - (2019) - WQ6X RAC's One Up - 3 years in a Row
= [x] - (2018) - WQ6X Says: Happy Birthday Canada!
= [x] - (2017) - WQ6X Racks one up in the RAC contest

The 2020 Canada Day Contest was TRULY
a last minute (5 minutes actually) event. 
Running from Alameda (via RCForb & VNC Viewer) gave me the opportunity to test a pair of Autek QF-1A filters to process the remote K3 audio. 

For the right ear an old classic MFJ-751
was cascaded preceding the QF1-A. 
A simple switchbox allowed running with
and without the filters in the audio line.

The filters worked reasonably well except on Tuesday evening when atmospheric noise hit 20, drove me down to 40 & eventually down to 160 & 80.  The K3's NB (Noise Blanker) was worthless for this noise and the NR (Noise Reduction) circuit distorted the
signal more than the noise.

I ran NX6T's STN-1 remotely to the tune of about 850 watts (to keep shack heat down) into

a 3-el Stepp-IR for the high bands, a 2-el Shorty-40 and a pair of droopy Coaxial inverted Vees.

15 meters was open most of the day and yet my CQ calls yielded few takers - wassup with that?!

 

Shortly after 18:00z 20 meters was FLOODED with stations running a CWT event.  Normally CWT folks stay above +.040 on the bands.  Unfortunately, they surrounded me as I was running 14036.36, forcing me down to 14032.32, 14029.29 14027.27 and finally down to 14022.22 for "protection". 

I guess they never heard of sending "QRL?" before calling CQ on an unknown frequency. 

Wassup with THAT?

 

My biggest beef came from the nearly 50 stations calling who were already

in the log for that band (i.e.. DUPEs).  Here are my thoughts about the DUP

situation:

- If you KNEW I was a DUP, then what was the point in calling me
  (only to receive the "QSO B4" message in return)

- If you DiD NoT know I was a DUPE then either you are not logging the QSOs,
   you logged the wrong callsign or your logging software is defective.

- You just don't care one way or the other that you are wasting everyone's time. 

   Others waiting in line to work me now have to wait even longer; or as they often

   do, find someone else to work, other than me.

 

I've written ad-nauseam about this problem; recently in fact [CLICK HERE] to read this.

 

Aside from the above issues the RAC Canada Day ran relatively smoothly.

When it was all over I immediately took screen shots, created a Cabrillo file and sent it in, but only after posting the score on the 3830 Scores website.  It would seem that WQ6X took 2nd place for

W6 (California), 3rd place for USA and 5th-place for North America - not bad for just screwing around.

 

What about YOU? 

DiD YOU work the RAC Canada GiG?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?