All scores are claimed scores unless otherwise noted. January: ARRL RTTY Roundup QSOs: 1254 Mults: 94 Score: 117,876 Op Time: 22 hours My best ever score for this contest. More QSOs than last year but one fewer mult. Should once again be good for first place Central Division but this year in the low power category. January: NAQP CW (final score) QSOs: 859 Mults: 168 Score: 144,312 Op Time: 9.5 hours QSOs and mults up from last year. With just enough activity on the high bands to make it interesting. Managed to run the bands with K9SE. Ran out of gas and could not operate the last 30 minutes. January: NAQP SSB (final score) QSOs: 274 Mults: 98 Score: 26852 A slight improvement from last year. But still a phone contest. Meh. January: BARTG RTTY Sprint QSOs: 301 Mults: 56 Score: 76,755 Op Time: 9 hours My first significant effort in this contest in years. February: XE RTTY QSOs: 246 Points: 618 Mults: 68 Score: 42,024 Op Time: 3.5 hours Another contest I had not operated for years but seized this pandemic opportunity. There were 21 XE mults worked, not a bad showing based on my memory of previous years. February: CW 160 QSOs: 522 Pts: 1166 Mults: 58 Score: 67,628 Other than having fun, was looking at this as an opportunity to pad my CWops ACA and CMA totals. February: CW 160 QSOs: 522 Pts: 1166 Mults: 58 Score: 67,628 Other than having fun, was looking at this as an opportunity to pad my CWops ACA and CMA totals. Missed the WPX RTTY and the ARRL DX CW due to a Florida vacation (yes!). February: NAQP RTTY QSOs: 607 Mults: 118 Score: 71,626 Decent operating conditions on 40 and 80, but activity on the higher bands was disappointing which led to a low mult total. And, of course, this contest does not include 160, which also affects the mult total, at least compared to the NAQP CW. 100,000 points is hard to achieve with a station like mine. March: WIQP QSOs: 103 Mults: 46 Score: 12,834 The WIQP organizers do a commendable job of stimulating mobile activity, so that if you stick with the contest for any appreciable length of time, you can work a lot of multipliers. April: FLQP QSOs: 42 Mults: 28 Score: 4,536 The annual warmup for the INQP. All QSOs were made operating from my car while parked in the driveway using the same setup I would use a week later for the INQP. Unfortunately, the FLQP does not include 80 meters, so I was unable to test for efficacy on that band. May: INQP QSOs: 675 Mults: 83 Score: 110,224 In 2020 the mobile category was suspended due to COVID-19 so it was nice to get back on the road. Thanks again to XYL Kathleen for driving. We activated 7 counties as a mobile (White, Carroll, Cass, Clinton, Boone, Montgomery and Tippecanoe) and then I parked for a couple of hours each on two different county lines: Fountain/Warren along with Benton/Tippecanoe. So a total of 10 counties were activated. Some parts of the mobile route had horrendous band noise due which seem to come from power lines and the occasional wind turbine. There were sections of Boone County where I had big pileups but was unable to work anyone due to a combination of band noise and the fact that all stations were zero beat. The county line operations were intentionally scheduled to coincide with the start of the NEWQP in order to maximize my rate and this proved to be somewhat, effective, although it seems that, as a rule, the New England Stations are much less likely to reply to an INQP CQ than the 7QP stations. We won the plaque for the top INQP mobile. One other impression of note: it appeared that, this year, the NEWQP operators were more interested in capturing my actual county in the exchange rather than just capturing “Indiana.” I also made a more concerted effort to work some phone to improve my multiplier total. Did better, but the 40 meter Hustler antenna just can’t do much on the phone section of the band when it is tuned for the CW section of the band. May: 7QP QSOs: 76 Mults: 36 Score: 7,632 May: NEWQP QSOs: 44 Mults: 24 Score: 2,064 June: ARRL VHF QSOs: 20 Mults: 17 Score: 340 Very little prop here but it appears some part of the country enjoyed much better conditions. June: CQ WW WPX CW QSOs: 84 Mults: 61 Score: 12,261 Focused on finding and working CWops members to improve my standing in the CWops Award programs. June: ARRL Field Day @W9LDX QSOs: 1,475 QSO Points: 4,776 (includes the x2 low power multiplier) Bonus Point: 1,450 Score: 6,226 The 2020 FD was altered due to the COVID-19 crisis with most teams operating as individuals from home in the 1D category. 2021 saw a return to the field although it appears home operation was still elevated. The Lafayette DX Association operated from Ross Hills Park, our customary venue, as a 1A station. Our score was up from 2019 but not as high as some other years. There was weird prop on 20m at the contest start which made the band useless, so almost all activity was on 40 and 80 until late Sunday morning. I was the unexpected beneficiary of this as I operated the last hour of the event on 20 CW and tallied 124 QSOs, a relatively high rate for FD CW. Perhaps the most memorable event from the weekend was the epic rain which hit twice. Once around 9 pm (after the storm photo, right) and then again shortly after midnight. The latter storm was so loud with the rain hammering the operating tent that Andy K9ELF moved from phone to FT4 as the noise of the rain made it impossible for him to hear. The satellite team had a VERY GOOD FD, tallying 139 SAT QSOs compared to 120 in 2019. The 2019 score was good for second place in the AMSAT Field Day which runs concurrently with the ARRL FD. 66 of those SAT QSOs will count towards the ARRL FD score. July: RAC Canada Day QSOs: 92 Mults: 17 Score: 10,132 Not sure why my score was down from previous years, beyond less time in the chair. July: IARU World Championship QSOs: 486 Points: 1,060 Mults: 127 Score: 134,620 Always a fun event and this year was no different. The W1AW HQ station operated from KL7 which meant I only snagged them on 3 bands due to the prop challenge; The NU1AW HQ station was in W5 so I was able to snag them on all 5 bands. I operated in the CW LP category and my score compares favorably in 3830. July: NAQP RTTY (Final Score) QSOs: 591 Points: 1,060 Mults: 152 Score: 89,832 A Top Ten finish. Woo Hoo! I pulled the plug after 9.5 hours of operating and it seems unlikely that an extra 30 minutes would have moved me up another spot in the standings, as rates tend to fall off late in this contest. This appears to have been the top Indiana score but Dick K9OM, operating from WI, had a slightly better score among Central Division entries. August: MOQP QSOs: 30 Mults: 16 Score: 960 Spent a bit of time to work some fellow SMC members and perhaps a few CWops members August: NAQP CW (Final Score) QSOs: 700 Mults: 141 Score: 98,700 Op Time: 8:51 Lost only 14 QSOs (less than 2 %) and 1 mult through log checking, but that was enough to drop my score under 100K. Decent activity on 15 meters was a plus but 10 meters was a total bust. The team of SMC Big Sable Point Lighthouse (W9RE,WI9WI,K9WX,WT9Q) finished 14th with only 4 logs and 510,300 points. A 5th log of just 30 k points would have moved us up one place. August: NAQP SSB (Final Score) QSOs: 158 Mults: 52 Score: 8,216 Op Time: 4 hours I actually lost a slightly higher percent of mults (2.5%) for the SSB summer NAQP than I did for the CW. Go figure. August: WW Digi QSOs: 23 Points: 34 Mults: 14 Score: 476 Op Time: 1 hour Made a few QSOs just to make sure my software setup (N1MM working with WSJT-X and JTAlert) was still functional. September: CW WW RTTY QSOs: 336 Points: 512 Mults: 106 Score: 54,272 Op Time: 13:25 A 40 m low power entry. Based on raw scores, this effort resulted in #20 of 107 world, #4 or 18 NA and #2 of 16 W. October: ILQP Mobile in Illinois QSOs: 573 Points: 1146 Mults: 82 Score: 93,972 Op Time: 5.25 hours Activated 12 counties as a way to help the ILQP activate all Illinois counties. I was the only station active from about half of those and the pileups were often fierce. XYL Kathleen graciously agreed to drive once again. Made a few QSOs early on 80 m but it was a bust after that. When we stopped for the night I discovered the 80 m resonator had come loose on the mast, which may have been the cause. In the month that followed, I received way more mail requests for QSL cards than usual. It appears that County Hunters are going strong. At the end of the contest we spent the night in southern Illinois. The next day we drove to Memphis, ate some great BBQ and gumbo and listened to some good music at BB King’s. October: Stew Perry Pre QSOs: 122 Points: 297 Score: 297 A good way to make sure the 160 m sloper was still working. November: SS CW QSOs: 753 Points: 1,506 Mults: 84 Score: 126,504 Op Time: 16:07 Great band conditions and great activity. What more can you ask for? There's no contest like Sweepstakes and, when it comes to Sweepstakes, there is no meters like 40 meters. You can work short stuff during the day and into both coasts at night. Forty is almost always open to somewhere and is almost always the money band, and this year was no exception. Many of the typically rare sections were well represented: Three ND and 4 NNY in my log. And we had three NTs spotted off and on. If there was a surprise in this regard, it was the rarity of the LA section. It seemed like they came on late and those that were running had big pileups until the end of the contest. And, what is it about Sweepstakes that brings out all the ops who want to send by hand with their key or paddle? Many of whom, it seems, had not done any manual sending since the last Sweepstakes. The ND9G parser found 60 SMC calls in my log, a great turnout from the Black Hole. Check your log at http://kb9bib.com/log_parse.htm My last section worked was NT at 0136z Sunday night/Monday morning. I had seen spots for three different NT stations off and on during the day but was unable to hear them, not even a whisper. Then, at about 0100 Sunday night, I found I could hear VY0ERC quite well. The pileup was huge and the going was slow. I threw out my call a few times with no success. It was at a point in the contest where I had S&Pd all the open bands with no new stations to work and my CQs were not being answered; I thought perhaps the contest was over for me. I figured I had little to lose trying to work him in terms of score, so I got a book and started reading, listening to the pileup as background noise. I eventually figured out a pattern. Once he would work a station, he called CQ, and the multitudes would respond. Bedlam ensued for, literally, several minutes with no response from the VY0, and the crowd disappeared thinking, perhaps, that the VY0 had gone QRT or that prop had been lost. Finally, when there were no callers to be heard, one persistent soul would drop his call and the VY0 would come back to him. It seemed this would not be a case of being the loudest or being slightly off frequency or having great timing but being the last man standing. Which is very hard to do as it goes against your instincts. I sat on the frequency for 35 minutes and the VY0 worked 10 stations in that time frame, so a 20 rate. But I was the guy he worked at minute 35. Interesting (at least to me) back story: I had worked VY0/VE1RUS Saturday morning on FT8. I could not remember that I had ever worked a VY0 before so I sent an email to VE1RUS to thank him for the QSO and to ask if he would be on for SS. He replied almost immediately to say yes and that he would be using the VY0ERC call. Check it out on QRZ, they claim to be the most northerly amateur radio club in the world. Looks like an interesting job and I appreciated their being active. November: SS SSB QSOs: 38 Points: 76 Mults: 22 Score: 1,672 Op Time: less then an hour I found I had little enthusiasm for a phone contest.
2021 Contest Results
K9WX Amateur Radio