WQ6X Works a WEIRD CQMM Weekend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While technically this was an 8-contest weekend, in reality, only 3 events actually ended
up in the log: the CQ-MM contest and 2 poorly participated QSO parties:

• [X] - CQ MM - South American contest
  
• [X] - MQP - Michigan QSO Party
  
• [X] - ONQP Ontario QSO Party
  

 Like other contest disappointments, every year I hope to finally hear Chinese stations, in their own contest and never do.  There were NO Chinese spots during the weekend; not even for the CQMM GiG.  Both QSO parties were poorly participated; I worked more MI W8 stations and VE3's in the CQMM contest than in their respective QSO parties.  HuH?

Being a Brazilian sponsored contest,  CQMM encourages plenty of South American activity. 
Looking at DXMAPS, it was clear that the East coast USA stations had a DIRECT pipeline to South America; explaining their higher scores overall (USA to SA contacts are worth 3 or 6 points apiece).

Questionable space-WX throughout the weekend put a damper on signal quality.  40, 15 and 20 meters produced more-or-less the same number of QSOs, altho the 40-meter SA Q's were worth 6-Points  80-meters produced only a handful of QSOs, despite calling CQ throughout the contest. 
Oh WAIL, next year, I guess - yeah RIGHT!

Sunday was spent mopping up contacts on 20 and 15 (10-meters was a 1-QSO no-show).  While
the ONQP had a 2nd run (on Sunday), the only VE3 station making it to the log sent me their ONQP exchange during a CQMM contact (I quickly switched to the ONQP log, enter the QSO and switched back to calling "CQMM w/o missing a QSO).

In the middle of it all, more Russian beacon monitoring found the "M" beacon weak on Saturday morning and AWOL on Sunday.  The "K" beacon no longer sends "K K K K" and then pauses; now
it ID's every 1.5 seconds like most of the other Russian military beacons.  The mystery of the Asiatic Russian letter beacons continues on.

During the weekend I heard several calls for the Holy land contest, yet NONE for the YU DX contest; the same as last year.  As for CQMM, approximately 20% of the calling stations OBVIOUSLY had not read the rules; they probably had no clue what "CQMM" even meant.  They would either send
me their state code (we were sending Serial #'s) or send me their name and QTH.  In this Blog post,
I included links to the event rules that YOU should have read PRIOR to each contest participation.

DiD YOU engage in any radiosport events during Easter weekend?

DiD you read the rules FIRST?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?