NX6T Survives 1st-time IARU Contest from Anza

With NX6T operations from Nashville now a distant chain of memories, we focus our attention and channel our energies forward from our new (I hope) home hosted by WA6TQT in Anza.  The location (known as Radio Ranch) is so strikingly different from Nashville.  I hear somewhat loud stations in Anza that were not even faint-whispers in Nashville.

After the IARU GiG was over, Dennis (N6KI) regaled me with a summary of our past IARU performance.  While we've always posted a 1st-place for San Diego (SDG) section, our USA
and WorldWide standings have been "middle of the list", at best.  The Factors attributing to this mediocrity included the operators available, man-made noise (QRN) to the Northeast (at only 900'
ASL we were physically close to the electronic noise curtain).  

Other factors contributing to our middle-performance include marginal (at best) antennas for
80/160 (a pair of coaxial-Bazooka Inverted Vee's) and sharing internet access via a microwave
link, as well as a bunch of other factors I cannot now remember.

In contrast, our use of Radio Ranch offers antennas already 2800' ASL.  The multi-acre land parcel
is largely away from interference-generating electronics.  Antenna-wise, multiple towers sporting stacked Yagi's for the high bands and stacked Stepp-IR's for 40 meters, the low bands were
covered by way of 4-Square (80-m) and 3-Square (160m) antennas.

Thanks to a set of Green Huron (GH) antenna control boxes, pointing and phasing the various antenna arrays is AMAZINGLY powerful.  Another factor in our favor is the now ever-increasing
solar flux index (approx 77 for IARU weekend).

One of the things I like about the IARU GiG is that it's multi-mode (a sort of Multi-Band 10-meter contest).  This year, every shift I ran, I spent a not-insignificant amount of time running frequencies
on Ssb; 40/75 meters, particular.  While the K3 (on the Anza end) sports a DVK for voice keying, recording it remotely from my end appends a "PSSHT!" sound before playing the recording;
I am assuming that spritz originate at my end as none of the operators experience that - the
story of my remote operation radiosport life.

It is interesting to use the RBN network stats as a tool for "backward looking" after a given event.  Screen capturing those RBN stats and saving them for "next year" will be an eye-opener, one or
more years from now.  Looking at the end of contest RBN stats for 2021, I was astounded by the variety of NX6T spots; something we saw only a fraction of in Nashville.

Last year I wrote a couple of interesting pieces on the IARU contest:

• [X] - A BLAST from the PAST look at IARU
• [X] - A write up about the 2020 event
  

With this years RBN spots, the BLOG entries for this time next year will give us all kinds of (meaningless) comparison data.

As more and more European operators submitted their logs. our 6th place standing slipped quietly down 13 points; at least JUST in the Top-20.

DiD YOU participate in the 2021 IARU HF Championship?

Is NX6T in BOTH your Ssb and Cw Logs?