Here is my summary of activity operating on the 2024 ARRL SSB DX contest this weekend. I’ll cover antenna related issues in a separate post and instead concentrate on the contest itself. I had the hexbeam up on Friday afternoon up about 15ft initially. I ran a line into the shack to be able to operate the homebrew rotator. I have to use my eyeballs to determine the proper direction, but it worked great! I couldn’t use it during the nighttime though as I could not see well enough in the dark to tell where it was pointing. I started the contest pointed roughly northeast. I started operating about 15 minutes after the contest started and over the next two hours came up with 20 QSO’s in Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. I was pleased to be making contacts on 20m basically for the first time in contesting on QRP.
I started early on Saturday and worked most of the day. I started on 40m with the vertical antenna to try and catch stations from Asia and managed one JA contact. Once the morning progressed the 3 bands using the hexbeam came alive. I move the antenna up to 20ft for the rest of the day. Propagation conditions were good and 10m especially was quite active. Overall making contacts was fairly easy. If a station could hear me, they could copy me well. Only in a few rare occasions would there be difficulties completing the QSO.
The high point of my afternoon was closing a QSO with Reunion Island on 15m and 10,600 miles from the QTH. On 5W SSB! I have to say to was quite a rush. Many thanks to the patient op who did not give up on pulling my weak call out of the ether. Once we closed the QSO the band came alive with a pile up for the location.
As the afternoon neared the end, I noticed some problems with the antenna and the rotator. I brought it down and made some adjustments and continued. The rotator quit again, and I called it a day.
Sunday morning, I started up again about 7am and closed several more contacts. My hope was to continue into the afternoon, but the antenna started giving me more problems. The rotator stopped again and SWR on 20m and 15m went high for some reason. A geomagnetic storm hit during the morning due to a CME and planetary K index went up to 5. The wind was picking up and I decided to call it a day and bring the antenna down.
My final claimed score was 164 QSO’s with 106 mults for a total score of 51,516. Without a doubt my best performance to date on DX QRP contesting. Here are some details:
This time around much better performance into Europe than previous attempts. The more notable contacts were with Reunion Island and Iceland.
I can’t be much happier with these results given the hexbeam is version 1.0. Its a winner and I need to make it more robust for the next event which will be field Day in June.
There were many personal factors that kept me from running competitively on the ARRL DX SSB contest this last weekend. I had intended to run this with either the 15m Moxon or the EFHW vertical beam but I just did not have the time to deploy either. I did not have an opportunity to operate the contest until nearly noon on Sunday.
Weather here was nice so I opted to take out the IC-705 with the JPC-12 antenna and setup for QRP “field day” style. Working 10m & 15m I managed 10 DX QSO’s in about an hour and a half. The contacts I did complete were done without difficulty. Furthest contacts were to Canary Islands and Argentina. 10m appeared to be the better band during this time.
I submitted my log as QRP non-assisted. All in all, I was glad to get outside with the radio and enjoy making some QRP DX.
The results of the 2022 ARRL DX SSB contest were published today in the latest QST Magazine. I noticed my post for this contest was titled “Death of a Moxon“. I operated as Single Operator Unlimited QRP and my operation featured the 15m Moxon antenna I had been developing. As noted in the previous post, I struggled quite a bit with the Moxon and ultimately some of the components failed in the South Texas Wind Machine. I got about half my QSO’s from this antenna then had to switch to S9v31 vertical for the rest of my operating time.
Even with these issues my strategy was overall a success!
First up, I was the winner of the West Gulf division in this category. Ok, so I was the only entry in the West Gulf Division. More significantly though. I came in #2 in the US and Canada and #3 worldwide with a score of 10,404. There was a total field of about 10 entries in this category. The high score was 31,200 by K8ZT in the Great Lakes Division.
The Moxon really gave me an edge on 15m QRP. I have since made many improvements that should prevent the problems I had during the contest. Main issue right now is securing the mast against the stake. Looking forward to trying this again on the CQ WW DX contest in October.
Finished working the ARRL DX SSB contest early today with 70 QSO’s and a claimed score of 10,920. I operated as Single operator unlimited QRP. Here is the QSO map:
Overall, very pleased with the results.
In previous contests I have not been able to make contacts into Europe reliably. The 15m Moxon really helped in this while it lasted. Here are the bands and continents worked:
15m was a strong band this year and I noted much more activity than on 20m. Solar conditions were better overall even though there was a geomagnetic storm driving the K index up to 5 on Saturday. Also solid were opening on 10m during the day. 40m was very reliable early in the morning into mainly Japan.
Having a gain antenna really improved QRP performance so will continue to work to improve my setup.
I have setup the 15m Moxon in preparation for the ARRL DX SSB contest starting later today. It has been up about 24 hours without any issues albeit the wind has been really light. Tomorrow will see breezy conditions so a real test coming up. I have printed a “rotation stop arm” that clamps on the mast pole and tries to prevent the antenna from rotating in the wind. It helps some but I am still having occasional issues. Pointing towards Europe I have made some SSB contacts on QRP with good results. I have been running FT-8 as well with similar results. It is interesting to see when the wind moves the antenna to a different direction and see the number of stations on the waterfall drop off.
Planning to run QRP Unlimited during the contest. Will likely start today with the Moxon pointed West towards Asia in hopes of catching a few stations before the band stops after sundown. Tomorrow morning I’ll point it towards the EU & the Caribbean. I’ll also be using the S9V33 vertical on 40m, 20m and 10m when 15m is slow.
Adventures in Amateur Radio 