WQ6X Walks a Weird ARRL 160 Contest

 

If I had to choose one word to summarize the ARRL  weekend, it be "Weirdly-Odd". 
To begin with, the contest start-time (22:00z - 14:00 PST) is unlike any other contest. 
It would seem that the starting time was chosen to favor East-coast USA amateur operators
(it's 5pm there).

As it turns out, we were DOOMed from the start (as I shall explain later).  That minor detail aside,
the weekend afforded me the opportunity to play on 160-meters from WA6TQT's Anza location (mostly in the middle of the night) while troubleshooting the degenerating morass of audio cabling behind the scenes of my operations from W7AYT's Concord location.

The antenna setup at WA6TQT is a "modest" Tri-Square
vertical array with an exceptionally low radiation-angle,
while at the same time possessing incredibly low-noise characteristics; Beverage antennas could hardly do any
better (receive-wise).  

Being a Tri-Square, each switch position possesses
a more-or-less 120-degree signal beam-width.  

At WA6TQT, the 3 switch positions encompassed:

1. 330-Degrees to 90-Degrees - for NA and EU.
   
2. 90-Degrees to 210-Degrees - for Caribbean & SA.
   
3. 210-Degrees to 330-Degrees - for JA/KH6/VK/ZL.

Antennas and propagation being the variable commodities
that they are, the degree descriptions (above) are hardly exact.  To quote the auto manufacturers "Your mileage
may vary".  Nevertheless, (with the exception of K7DA),
we probably had the most potent 1.3kw signal throughout
the Southwest.  By contrast, while my setup at the Concord location allows for 160-meter operation, it's likely an NVIS signal, finding only : CA, OR, UT, CO AZ & NM.

A number of geomagnetic storms were littered throughout the weekend "complemented" by an
actual form of Quick-Fading unlike slow-fading which can occur over a more-or-less 10-second period.  With quick-fading signals are there, then gone 2-seconds later and back 2-seconds
after that.

Propagationally, the 160-meter band is a world unto itself.  With 160 contests intentional
after-midnight QRM rarely occurs.  As such it's easy to doze-off when the rate drops;
at least, the 40-meter intentional QRM-Idiots kept me awake - for better or worse.

The only thing we missed were Europe and Africa in the log. Oh, and one final comment,
as happened several weekends back, NX6T [incorrectly] repeated the blunder of reporting our
QTH as being in SDG section, rather than the ORG section  (where Anza is actually located). 
By the time I OP'd on, it was too late to change the exchange.

As I learned from the 2011 Ssb Sweepstakes, once you make a single-QSO from a given location you are ethics-bound to operate that callsign from that location in that way.  ([CLICK HERE] to read about that.)   Our blunder aside, the ARRL 160-meter contest was an excellent low-band training exercise.  The final Stew Perry (SP-160) GiG is coming up and we will be ready for this one as well; instead of
a section, we will be sending a GRID-Square number.

Before during and after the contest weekend, the WQ6X audio filter layout was thoroughly
tested, from which I discovered a distorting LM-386 chip in the left channel.  Hopefully I will
have a replacement by the upcoming 10-meter contest weekend.

DiD YOU play in the 2021 ARRL 160-Meter contest?

Is WQ6X or NX6T in YOUR LoG?