WQ6X SkiDs thru another Quad-conTesT Weekend.

The 2nd radiosport weekend in September brings us the usual bevy of radiosport contest GiGs on Saturday, wrapped by the 48-hour Worked All Europe (WAE) Ssb event from Friday through Sunday afternoons.  The agenda included the following GiGs:

• [X] - Worked All Europe (WAE)
• [X] - Colorado QSO Party (COQP)
• [X] - New Jersey QSO Party (NJQP)
• [X] - NA SPRINT Cw Contest

This year's WAE GiG happens amidst a backdrop of a Solar Flux Index (SFI) down to 110. 
Ironically, last year at this time, the SFI was almost exactly the same as this WAE weekend.
([CLICK HERE] to read about last year.)

After a business trip the decision was made to stay over at the hotel for Friday and Saturday,
finishing the WAE GiG from my Alameda office, with its more reliable internet.  Because the WAE contest is all about Europe, I received permission to run STN-1 @WA6TQT's Anza location running low power (there is no QRP category in WAE).  The Anza QTH gave me access to stacked yagi's on 40 thru 10 meters (altho the 10/15 yagi's were fixed @ 35-degrees due to a tower rotor in for repair).

Band conditions were so poor that evening 20-meters was not open to Europe on Friday evening. Early in the evening, tuning around 40-meters weak signals eventually became strong enough to make QSOs, but certainly not loud enough to consider sending QTC traffic.  Eventually, the yagi stacks pointed to EU on 40-meters made a handful of QSOs possible.  When 40-meters faded
into European sunrise, the hope for a 20-meter opening on Friday never materialized, offering
the opportunity to cash-in on sleep time.

Saturday is when most of thew action happened, beginning with the Colorado and NJ QSO parties, altho it seemed as if the signals were Colorado much of the time.  Sometimes stacked yagi's can actually be a too low-angle detriment - 20-meter NVIS is the way to work Colorado from Southern California.  Then again, while the East coast was hearable, stations in New Jersey were largely nowhere to be found.

Unfortunately, because both QSO parties are over before the SPRINT GiG ends, any hope for QSOs is largely futile.  If they would offer us a 2nd-run on Sunday (as many QSO parties do), everyone would be served by that.  However, for me SPRINT takes priority over QSO parties.

Eventually on Saturday morning 15-meters opened to Europe - not great, but enough to make it worth my operating time.  After 90-minutes on 15-meters and 20-minutes on 20, a whopping 20-QSOs made it to the log.  On both Saturday and Sunday, propagation to Europe abruptly disappeared @22:00z (3pm PDT). Coincidence?

For the September SPRINT GiG, I chose to run QRP considering that I had yagi stacks for 20 & 40
and a 4-Square vertical array for 80-meters.  The result was 136-QSOs and 40-multipliers.  Sadly, the only Canadian heard was a VE6.  Wassup with VE/VA stations largely absent from the SPRINT GiG?
Most important was significantly beating the 2o25 score.  It's always good to improve year over year.

Sunday opened with a handful of QSOs and then going to great lengths to solicit receiving stations
for what turned out to be 40 QTC's.  When it was all over, while the results were not as great as 2o25,
at least I can say WQ6X played a role in WAE Ssb.  This was a good prelude to the upcoming WAE RTTY contest (which is truly a worldwide affair).

DiD YOU work the QSO parties, SPRINT & WAE contests?

How many mults ended up in YOUR LoG?