P40L-P49Y Contest Summary Information

Comments:

Well, despite enthusiasm for the sunspots that emerged in December, band conditions were not what we all wished for.  From my perspective in Aruba, overall conditions were significantly down from last year.  My QSO number was also down ... by 7.2%.  It was even more discouraging Saturday night at 05Z, though, when I was off by 14.3%.  That pissed me off, so I really buckled down and scraped for every QSO during the rest of the contest.  I compounded the problem by a self-inflicted logger setup problem that shut me down in the first few minutes while I straightened out the logs on my three networked computers.

Fortunately, I closed the gap by the end.  At my 24-hour mark, my raw QSO count was second only to 2009 out of the past six years, since I've been doing Round-Up as SOHP from Aruba.  And, my highest clock hour ever was in the second hour of the contest, 19Z, with 216 QSOs.  Even so, I felt limited by the shallow pileups and was calling a lot more CQs than I would hope for (lull in the pileup).

Total mults have been nearly the same as well as the continental breakdown.  If (no, "when") solar activity returns, we should see the number of mults go up for everyone, as well as QSOs.

The bands just "felt" punk the week before Round-Up and nothing surprising happened during the weekend.  There were times when it was really painful and that had one bright side, because it grounded our expectations for the two "hot periods" that I experienced.  The first was during the 06Z hour when my rate of 143 exceeded my 18Z start hour.  The 143 QSOs in that hour was exhilarating.  40 and 80 just "came alive", like all the hams in the world stopped whatever else they were doing and got into this contest!  The bands sounded "hot" during that hour and it was sweet payback for the preceding eleven hours.

The second hot period for me came Sunday from 16-19Z when 20 and 15 came alive and my two pileups deepened.  The rate popped up to an average of 135/hour with 149 in 16Z.

Notwithstanding the disappointing band conditions, this has been another enjoyable trip.  The station is working well after the antenna/tower replacement project we did this year (between CQ WPX RTTY and ARRL DX CW).   has improved not only the reliability, but also the performance, on both transmit and receive.  It was hard work for two weeks, but seems to be paying off.  Thanks again to John, P40L/W6LD, and Andy, P49Y/AE6Y, for sharing their wonderful stations with me.

Carl (P49V/AI6V) and XYL Sue (AI6YL/P40YL) are here at their new cottage station and a great delight to hang out with.  Sue entered the SOLP category in this one and is having a ball!  (My 24 hours ran out two hours before hers, so she just finished up a few minutes ago.)  I think she experienced her all-time high rates in RTTY contesting this weekend.  So, I need to close this out and get cleaned up for our post-contest dinner.

As always, my sincere appreciation to the thousands of stations that call join into the contest, the vast majority of which will say they are not contesters, but take the opportunity to operate their station with the high activity of a contest weekend.  Without them, there would be no contest and most of them will never see these reports.  It's also great to work all of you regulars who do surf these 3830 reports.  Thanks again to everyone for attending the "party".

Ed - P49X (W0YK)