WQ6X RAC's one up for Canada + 160 Meters

Unless you reside in Europe, technically, this last weekend marked the "official" end of North American radiosport contest GiGs. Because the weekend was littered w/different short-spurt contest activities, a lot of "juggling" was required throughout; especially when you factor in the various jumps in the Solar Flux Index (SFI), with its attendant geomagnetic storms/

The Canadian Winter contest began promptly at 00:00 (4pm PST); with all the necessary audio
re-routing, my operations actually began much later than I would have liked.  

Altho the RAC contest is a Canadian GiG, we are allowed to work anyone around the world for 2-points per contest exchange.  If the station happens to be Canadian, those contacts are worth
10-points; if they are an RAC HQ station (VE7RAC, VE6RAC, VE2RAC, etc.) those contacts are worth a whopping 20-points for that single contact alone.  My only real beef w/the RAC GiG is that
24 hours is not long enough; at least give us another 6+ hours (like we have with the California QSO Party) - that way I could play around more; my attendant SP-160 duties cost me some significant RAC GiG operating time.

The GooD news this last weekend was the SFI skyrocketing to as high as 132.  The BaD news is that there were several short (but intense) solar storms throughout the weekend and even afterwards.  At times, while the Space-WX ratings were poor, we managed to keep a frequency going for upwards of 2-hours before the frequency bullies showed up (we simply found a new run frequency).

The SP-160 GiG begins at 15:00z (which is 7am in California).  A brief power failure during the
night delayed my 7am wake-up call; nevertheless, by 7:30 I was in the remote-OP chair, looking
for remnants of the morning sunrise greyline.  By 8:45 (PST) 160 was ionized out of existence for approx. 6 hours.  After a short morning nap, the RAC GiG was FULL of activity on 15-meters and even a couple of (brief) openings were had on 10-meters.

Last-minute operator shift changes found me remotely CQ'ing by 22:15z (2:15pm).  Interlacing searching and pouncing allow me to observe the slow (but inevitable) 160-meter opening in Anza. 
As the minutes wore on, the reachable Km distance continued to expand out until just before my shift-end at 23:40z, turning it over to N6KI and putting a final dozen QSOs in WQ6X's RAC contest log.

Due to a Rockville mixer internal audio amp problem, manual device switching was used all weekend, with no actual "mixing" happening; meaning that I couldn't listen to Latin Jazz on SW in the background while running a frequency - Bummer DewD!

Because a replacement amplifier board is in the build process on the Alameda workbench, I am being patient and thankful to still have available an old Radio Shaft A/V switch unit.  

This unit allows me to switch between the ICOM 7000 (for SWL'ing), the K3/0 remote access unit, FT-1000mp audio
thru the analog MFJ-752 filters or the QF-1a + DSP filter combinations.  This meant that the Stereo CW facility was not available with the K3/0 during the SP-160 contest - Bummer DewD!.  Luckily, the SP-160 operation survived without it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the WQ6X (East Bay) end of things, a whopping 18 QSOs were put into the SP-160 log. 
While I had reasonable signals throughout the western 1/3 of USA, Colorado, Arizona and
New Mexico were as far out as the WQ6X 8JK Cobra array could be heard on 160-meters. 
That copy was possible at all is to me the REAL miracle during the weekend.

When it was all over, it would seem that NX6T took 5th-place overall and 1st-place
for California, the Southwest division and Western USA overall.

DiD YOU work the SP-160 GiG and/or the RAC Winter Contest?

Is NX6T or WQ6X in YOUR LoG?