K3PP's QRP CWT Adventure

OK, so a one-hour event doesn't quite qualify as an adventure, but it was indeed different! 😀 I have come to adore the CWops CWT mini-contests each Wednesday and I almost always run them full QRO - or close to full. I will rarely run one at 100W, but I never did one QRP ... until last night.

I recently built a QRP Labs QCX QRP transceiver for 80m - my third QCX (others are on 30m and 20m). I wired up a USB interface to do CAT control of the 80m QCX and got it working with N1MM+ logging software. The particular interface I used has the necessary TX, RX, and GND connections, but it also has a DTR pin. I wired this pin up to key CW and successfully configured N1MM+ to key it. All was set!

As my first real test, I decided to try it in the 03-Dec 03:00 UTC running of the CWT. I didn't expect much, because the CWT's high activity levels can make it tough to get through the pileups. For the first 6 minutes, I tried with my trusty old Force-12 EF-180BV vertical. Nothing! I switched to my low 80m dipole, usually better for 75m phone, but hey, I got some answers! 

After the hour was done, I was very pleased with a total of 44 QSOs! Obviously, CWops members have great ears! Of course, you need to go with a different strategy with QRP. You certainly cannot "brute force" your way through it, as I normally can do because I have big power, decent antennas, and a superb QTH. So, I keep the same antennas and QTH and just turn the power down by 99.999%! I tuned for the really big signals and timed my call properly. Most of the other ops came right back to me (remember those great ears!) and I only had to fight for a handful of the QSOs. In every one of those cases, it's because I made a bad choice and called a weaker station, making him work much harder to hear my puny signal through the din. Lesson learned.

The map above (courtesy of N9MS's excellent qsomap.org site) shows the locations of the QSOs with grid square data. The longest path was my friend Claude VE2FK in FN68hq, 679 miles away. That's ~340 miles/watt - not too shabby for 2 watts on 80m! While I will again try QRP in a CWT every now and then, I'll try to spare my CWops buddies from the pain of pulling out my pipsqueak signal! But, it was fun, so I'll do it again! That's what this stuff is all about - fun!

TU VY 73 de Glenn K3PP

K3PP 2020 CQWW DX CW Contest

One For The Record Books

Well, THAT was fun! I have come to appreciate CW contests far more since I joined the CWops club in 2017. This was my best single-op CQWW CW contest yet! My full writeup is on 3830, but here are the basic numbers:

        Band  QSOs Zones Countries
         160:   50   12     28
          80:  132   21     68
          40:  317   28     94
          20:  656   31    105
          15:  483   27    102
          10:  103   20     41
       Total: 1741  139    438
   Claimed Score: 2,848,072

This beat my prior best last year on all fronts except multipliers (more on mults later)! 

Digging Deeper Into K3PP's Performance

Here is a K3 Performance Plot that I create in Excel after each major contest. Someday, I plan to automate the creation of these plots because it is a rather tedious exercise in Excel. They come out looking nice, but I'm too lazy to keep doing this over and over again! Laziness is the father of invention!

I wanted to go strong in this contest. For the last several years, I haven't had much reserve energy to make it trough the night. I live a demanding life that leaves me pretty exhausted by the end of the week. Still, I was happy to put in 35 hours and they were pretty solid for a change. Butt-in-chair (BIC) works! I am thrilled to have some strong hours, largely the result of some good runs. 

I've long been a mediocre CW operator, so running wasn't something I did very much. Since joining CWops and doing as many of their weekly CWT events as possible, I improved dramatically. While I still don't consider myself to be good at CW, I'm "good" compared to the 2016 version of K3PP! I expect to be lousy compared to the 2022 version of K3PP! 😀 700 of my 1741 QSOs were from running, a huge improvement over the past. I'm a happy boy!

We All Enjoyed Lots Of DX, But "The Rona" Trimmed That

In the CQWW DX contests, Germany (DL) is always my best DX country based on number of QSOs. This year, Germany really blew away all others - Danke! We love our European friends here in the Northeast US! Our Canadian friends played a bigger than usual role. They're always high on the list, but the VEs came through very well! Notably missing from my top list is Japan (JA). I did work a few JAs, but the troublesome Tic-Ring holding my 20m yagi is stuck on Europe. Working JAs off the side lobes is difficult! I should have bagged dozens of JA QSOs and probably another dozen multipliers had I been able to turn that beam! Oh well, I will fix that problem with the new station. More to come on that new station (hopefully) soon!

We usually have a real cornucopia of semi-rare DX in this contest, but many of those countries came as the result of DXpeditions. These DXpeditions were down considerably in this miserable year - yet another casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I did manage to log ten stations on all six bands:

   C6AGU (M/M)

   CR3W  (M/M)

   CR6K  (op: CT1ILT)

   EI7M  (M/M)

   LZ9W  (M/M)

   P40W  (op: W2GD)

   TI7W  (op: KL9A)

   V31MA (M/S LOW power!)

   VE2IM (op: VE3DZ)

   ZF1A  (op: N6MJ)

These stations were staffed by some real contesting legends! Just check out their scores! Wow!

CU AGN In The Next Contest!

I enjoy all facets of ham radio, but I  LOVE contesting! I look forward to working you in a whole bunch of contests in the future! Hopefully, I'll work you from my new QTH soon. That's another story altogether and one I plan to detail as it's going along. Stay tuned!

VY 73 de Glenn K3PP