WQ6X Kicks-It in another King-of-Spain Cw Contest

The King-of-Spain (K-o-S) Cw contest is one of those events I never know what to do with,
except operate; luckily, it's really that easy.  The original plan for the contest was to run the GiG
from W7AYT's QTH in Concord as a low power station.  A text from N6KI on Friday evening gave
me the go-ahead to run STN-2 @WA6TQT at high power (opening up the possibility for a newbie
San Diego operator to have a shot at a 1st-place for low power); how can I go wrong there? 
Other than a brief SWR glitch mid Saturday evening, the operation ran essentially flawless.

Friday evening found me competing in the Toastmasters District-57 International Speech contest, followed by an ARCA radio club board meeting and the District-57 annual conference and Evaluation contest on Saturday.  Running the K-o-S contest while attending conference sessions helped me survive the BORING business meetings on Saturday morning.

Because the King-of-Spain GiG is a European-based contest the 12:00z (5am for me) starting time
is of course to be expected, altho I didn't actually roll out of bed until around 5:45am.  With a solar flux of over 160, 20-meters became THE go-to band this year, while 40-meters turned out to be quite a disappointment, as did the JA participation in this event.  Encountering solar storms all weekend certainly didn't make my day (or my weekend for that matter).

Also happening during the weekend was the Arkansas QSO Party (ARQP), which explains the dozen+ callers in the K-o-S contest sending me 599 + their State; then again, several stations sent me their name and QTH (probably wondering why I didn't do the same).  This of course takes us back to previous blogs where I ask: Do you know what "CQ EA TEST" means?  If not, then you should NoT call me - it's as simple as that. I've written about this problem many times before.
([CLICK HERE] for the latest thoughts on this topic.

What amazed me for that weekend was the number of stations who desperately called multiple times and then disappeared after I sent the exchange.  HuH? Am I missing something??  You drown out legitimate callers and then disappear?  WTF was THAT all about?  (They probably realized they had no CLUE what an EA Test was and just quietly slinked away.)

By 00:00z, the District-57 conference was largely over, allowing me to focus 100% on the King-of-Spain GiG.  Unfortunately, the number of callers nearly-completely disappeared.  10 & 15 meters were largely a no-Show, no new stations were found on 20, and 40 meters was not yet open. 
Bummer DewD!  Low turnout marked the rest of the contest period.

Literally, out of boredom (bore-dumb?), at 05:00z I switched the station over to 20 meters, discovering yet another opening to Europe (EU); amazing when you consider that the low bands had been largely obliterated due to a solar storm also unfolding at that time.

Every year I hope for a large turnout in the (3-Point) Spanish stations; this year only mildly satisfied that desire.  One thing is certain - running frequencies most of the time is what resulted in the EA stations in the log; it seems very few were actually calling CQ themselves.  40-meters was largely
a disappointment.  Lack of Asian stations certainly didn't help the score.  The "K" and "M" beacons certainly indicated the propagation paths to Asia were WIDE OPEN, despite lack of actual stations
to take advantage of it.

When no one is around to play with, in radiosport GiGs can quickly devolve into being tedious and boring; at least, calling CQ helps keep me awake in the middle of the night.  Once in awhile a surprise caller calls in, making it all worthwhile.  Then again, when a band falls apart, that is what the bandswitch is for.  ([CLICK HERE] for the contest scores.)

2022's 287 QSO log certainly surpassed last year's run from Fallbrook.  According to the 3830 Scores, this year, WQ6X managed 12th place overall, 6th place for USA and 1st-place for the
Left Coast; not bad for just screwing around.

Afterwards, I submitted an 8-QSO log for the AR QSO Party to at least say I was there. 
WQ6X is on the "Logs Received" list on the King-of-Spain website.

What about YOU?  Were YOU there?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?