WQ6X dual-OPs a 1st NAQP Ssb GiG

This weekend brought us a truly unique Ssb North American QSO Party (NAQP) radiosport contest experience.  During the last several months, while I have run many radiosport GiGs at QRP power 
(5-watts), I have specifically avoided Ssb contests, due to the mistaken belief that [somehow] QRP Ssb signals will [somehow] be unintelligible to most potential-calling stations.  This weekend laid to rest any misgivings I have had about successfully running an Ssb contest with only 5-watts.

For the NX6T-end of the dual-OP operation, N7NR (Dave) organized everything, with the hope of
gaining unique team-leader experience.  Dave certainly found himself "knee-deep" in organizational challenges as BOTH K3-radios at the WA6TQT superstation developed audio problems on Thursday.  Thanks to adroit coordination between N7NR and N6KI, both radios were remedied in time for a final remote checkout on Friday evening.  For reasons too complex to fathom, we ran the DXLOG contesting software on STN-1 and the WINTEST program on STN-2.

Thanks to having access to stacked Yagi's for the high bands, callers from all over USA and Canada said we were LOUD.  I double checked the 95-watt power level and confirmed that the software to run the Expert 1.5k amplifier was not active.  When I took over STN-1 during the 4pm-to-8pm operating shift, both stations at NX6T (running as Multi-2) had already put more than 1200 Ssb contacts in the log.  During my 4-hour shift I added nearly 400 more contacts to that total.

On the QRP-side of things, running Ssb was tricky, for all the reasons I mentioned in the previous NAQP QRP blog entry.  In addition to all those points, because running Ssb involves P.E.P. (Peak Envelop Power), setting the power level to not exceed QRP restrictions required a judicious use of
the wattmeter on the MFJ-993B tuner, along with increased settings on the mic gain and the speech processor built-in to the FT-2000 transceiver.  While the Electro Voice 664 microphone is wonderful for casual conversation, during Ssb contests, I prefer the Heil PRO-set microphone, which is designed more for contest "punch" than it is for ragchewing (the EV-664 once again became a mic stand).

When the 12-hour contest finally wrapped up at 06:00z (10pm PST), after all the score submissions,
it would seem that BOTH WQ6X and NX6T took 1st-place for California.  NX6T managed an incredible 3rd-place finish overall.  (Note: According to the May/June issue of the NCJ Contest Journal, WQ6X took 3rd-place overall for the Single-OP assisted QRP category - wOw! - NoT BaD considering I was just screwing around for a few hours)

More important, WQ6X demonstrated once again that QRP is ACTUALLY a viable operating mode.

DiD YOU participate in the January NAQP Ssb contest?

Is WQ6X or NX6T in YOUR Log?