WQ6X Works a Wacky end-of-April Contest Weekend

The last weekend of April brings us a minimal radiosport contest weekend opening with the
classic SP-DX RTTY contest, the FQP (Florida QSO Party) on Saturday and Sunday and the
BARTG-75 4-hour RTTY Sprint, also on Sunday.

The 4th weekend is also the ARCA (Amateur Radio Club of Alameda) monthly membership meeting. 
After a brief presentation on putting up and end-fed wire attached to the 2nd story balcony of the 
Oakland Yacht Club, we did a Field Day practice exercise using an ICOM-7300 and Kenwood
TS-590S, comparing signal levels between the two radios while changing the antenna from a
Sloper (favoring N-E) to a more-or-less flattop layout broadside due-East (favoring Florida and
their QSO Party).

The on-air activity put 3 Florida stations in the K6QLF LoG, followed by a signal report from AO75DN in Spain; not bad considering the HF bands were littered w/atmospheric noise created by the latest round of solar storms happening during the previous 36 hours.

After the ARCA presentation I initiated a remote operation running WQ6X QRP from KN6NBT's Ramona QTH (north San Diego County).  Being 400 miles south of SF bay area and up on a hilltop, Ramona location was largely immune from the noise experienced in the East Bay (EB) section. 
The REAL test came when the K3/0 Mini and RigExpert PLUS (for RTTY decoding) was set up
at W7AYT's Concord QTH.  

Unfortunately, by then, the FQP was about to end for the day (02:00z), meaning I missed out on
a 40-meter opening to Florida.  That simply meant that focus could be given to the SP-DX RTTY contest GiG.  While there seemed to be plenty of RTTY activity heard overall, the high solar induced noise levels tended to obscure my QRP signal in Europe.

On Saturday morning, while looking for last minute RTTY action, most of the 40-meter Cw segment (~7.020 - 7.050) was littered with Japanese stations engaging in their own domestic competition. 
The way they sent their prefecture and a designation code-letter, it seemed like a Japanese-style November Sweepstakes GiG.  

The SP-DX GiG ended at 12:00z while I slept, in preparation for FQP (Part 2) and my first exposure
to running the higher speed BARTG-75 4-hour sprint.  In this unique GiG, running in Search & Pounce (S&P) mode, none of the called stations came back to me.  Based on that, the decision was made to spend the rest of the BARTG-75 Sprint time running frequencies, encouraging stations to tune me in properly.  For some reason the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) was not spotting WQ6X running the higher baud rate.

When BARTG-75 was over, the rest of Sunday afternoon was spent (albeit futilely) looking for any
new FQP activity.

DiD YOU work the RTTY contests or the Florida QSO Party?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Wades thru WALLs of Space-WX NoiSe to work the World

Due to Saturday participation in the Alameda Shindig representing Toastmasters clubs in Alameda,

a BiG part of the radiosport time was already over by the time of my 02L00z starting time in Concord. 
A number of intertwining events were on the air including:

• The MIQP, NEQP and ONQP QSO Parties.
• WAPC (Worked All Provinces in China) - which always offers high hopes
  and ends up being a DuD, virtually every year.
• The CQMM Cw Contest (with this year's longer operating period) which rewards
  stations who work my QRP signal with a 10-X point bonus.

This contest weekend was littered w/solar storms, creating HUGE walls of noise. 
You've heard me about weird - well on Sunday, the propagation was so WEIRD
(How Weird was it? - Ed.) that stations w/the best signals seemed to come from 90-degrees
eastward of whatever direction the Stepp-IR yagi was pointing.  (Ex: I2FT calling in on 14.030
from AZ:351 - now THAT's Weird).

Right after the ONQP ended (18:00z on Sunday) the 3rd wall of noise made its way to Ramona.  Fortunately, the CQMM's 23:59:59z ending time offered to frog-hop between 19, 15 & 20 meters,
with no band-change penalties.  

Then again, running QRP made it a challenge to get the message thru, which is when the array
of F-KEY messages are handy for sending "repeats" in many different ways.  Another "weird"
 one was a PY1 station asking for my "NR?" (number); there are no numbers, only "SEC?"
(which is close enough to continent).  Nevertheless, my response was to send "NAQ"
(North America running QRP).

While propagation paths seemed unpredictable, 10-meters eventually rewarded us with
an opening to South America (SA), with a pair of JA6 stations calling in when the Stepp-IR
was switched 180-degrees (from South America).  40-meters was LOADED with JA stations
who were unfortunately running Ssb, not the CQMM contest.

While the weekend left LoTs to be desired, it was a useful QRP exercise Experience.

DiD YOU work the state QSO Parties or the CQMM contest?

Is WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Turns JIDX CW into a Calamatous 5-Contest Weekend

Calling the 2nd radiosport weekend of April a "Calamatous 5-Contest Weekend"
is a perfect summary of the weird combination of events and stations w/in those
events - WEIRD, but Workable.

In retrospect, from reading a slew of 3830 soapbox entries, we could say that this contest
weekend was (as they say) a mixed-bag.  During the weekend I spent time ad-libbing
2 QSO parties (NDQP wasn't listed on the Contest Calendar), the IG-RTTY contest,
the Yuri Gagarin Russian GiG, and of course, the showcase event - the JIDX Cw contest.

In addition to running the 2am to 6am shifts both mornings, I took over the 8pm to 10pm
(the "Dinner Shift") using 20-meters to more-or-less keep things alive, hoping for the Mult-OP
(on STN-1) to find any straggler mults on 15 & 10.  Overall, it seems as if overall JA-activity was
WaY down this year; we will know for sure when the log submission deadline has been reached.

Both mornings on 40-meters it seemed that the JA-participation was down while the QRM-level
was significantly UP.  Propagation to Asia was quite good, in-so-far as the "K" & "M" Russian
military beacon loud signals indicated.  

Sunday morning, the 40-meter band was plagued by a SUPER-WIDE (S-9+) Woodpecker. 
I was so desperate to avoid it, I engaged in a game of "Leap Frog" between 80 and 20 meters,
cognizant of the 10-min band change rule in JIDX.  Only as a last resort was 40-meters considered.  Base on antenna pointing and reports from other operators, the Woodpecker SEEMED to originate
from inland Asia (Vladivostok?) beamed at the USA.  Is there any correlation to the Russian military "F" beacon off the air during the same periods?

The NM & GA QSO parties were ho-hum affairs; altho the 2nd-run of GAQP on Sunday kinda made up for the dearth of stations on Saturday.  Altho NoT listed on the contest calendar, one station was heard on 20-meters calling "CQ NDQP...", so I assume North Dakota had their own GiG happening. 
A note to QSO Party sponsors: if y'all want us to play in your QSO party, ya' gotta advertise it and send e-mail to previous participants (like me).

The IG-RTTY contest is a unique event in that the exchange consists of sending the FOUR digits
of the year you were 1st-licensed (Ex: 1969)

Sunday gave us another opportunity to work GAQP stations, altho there were NoT many new stations to work.  At 23:30z it occurred to me that most of the GAQP action had moved down to 40-meters.  While 15:30 (local time) is usually quite early for working GAQP stations (especially running QRP), there was NoThing to lose by giving it a go.  Eventually, 2-QSOs DiD frantically make it into the log, just in time for the 23:59:59z contest end.

To end Sunday afternoon, a not-inconsiderable amount of time was spent capturing ending screens, posting 3830 stats and submitting log files.  It ALMOST seemed as if more time was spent doing "admin" work than running the non-JIDX events combined.

A self-induced side-benefit of operations during the weekend was a thorough shake-down of the morrasively complex audio cable configuration used in the W7AYT portable setup.  To combat poor signal comprehension, the complete array of DSP units (JPS NIR-10 & NIR-12 & MFJ-984) as well
as the classic pair of MFJ-752 audio enhancement filters made it all possible.

DiD YOU run any of the 5 radiosport GiGs during the 2nd April contest weekend?

Is NX6T or WQ6X in YOUR LoG?

WQ6X Wanders thru a Very Wonky, Weird & Very MESSY 5-contest Collage

This was another of those radiosport weekend collages that promised MUCHO and delivered POCO.
Accompanied by a flurry of Space-WX storms, other than the RTTY contest, not a lot of success was made.  Everything about April's first radiosport weekend was just a bit weird, yet again validating the utilization of the recently implemented F-12 [WEIRD] key.

For openers, all the events commenced @12:00z or later - for WQ6X still the "middle of the night".  Beginning 5am, opening the EA-RTTY contest on 40-meters, hoping for an Asian opening turned
out to be a waste of time. Moving to 20-meters found an opening via N-E.

For the 3 QSO Parties (LA, MS & MO) the hope was for some activation of their rare counties.  Space-WX induced poor propagation all-but negated any real success in the LA & MS GiGs.  Missouri, being geographically closer and along the N-E propagation curve, as well as a 2nd-run
on Sunday, made MOQP the premiere QSO party for the weekend.  What made this weekend different over previous operations was the decision to run every contest GiG QRP whenever
available in the contest rules.

Pulsing internet dropouts at the Concord QTH necessitated recording the F1-CQ, F3-TU and
F4-WQ6X tones in the corresponding K3 digital voice keyer (DVK) memory.  Then, even if the
internet drops during transmission, the radio (on the other end) actually doing the transmission
is not affected.  The downside of this method is the [ESC] key does not interrupt the xmission;
it takes the stop button on the K3 to accomplish that.

Unfortunately, the time wasted looking for LA and MS stations detracted significantly from the
already meager EA-RTTY score.  Of course, behind it all was the annoying intermittent appearance
of geomagnetic storms, often contributing to radio dropouts on 20, 15 and even 40-meters. 
The hoped-for 40-meter opening DiD occur on Sunday morning; however, the Cw/Digital
portion of the band was LITTERED w/Ssb signals, NoT RTTY.

The backdrop for the weekend was the HORRENDOUS solar storms littered throughout the weekend; some so severe the SFI number registered as ZERO.

When it was ALL over, they only thing I can really be certain of is that I switched different modes
a dozen different times and eventually submitted a bunch of LoG files, confirming the fact that
was indeed in action throughout this WEIRD radiosport weekend.

DiD YOU participate in this 1st weekend's radiosport GiGs?

Is WQ6X /QRP in YOUR LoGs?