CQ WPX SSB Contest This Weekend

[N1API]

Here are the results for my contest effort this weekend. This one deserves a story and an explanation.

First the results:

START-OF-LOG: 3.0
LOCATION: CT
CALLSIGN: N1API
CLUB: Meriden ARC
CONTEST: CQ-WPX-SSB
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-ASSISTED: ASSISTED
CATEGORY-BAND: ALL
CATEGORY-MODE: SSB
CATEGORY-POWER: LOW
CATEGORY-STATION: FIXED
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
CATEGORY-OVERLAY: TB-WIRES
CLAIMED-SCORE: 1179000
OPERATORS: N1API
NAME: Al
ADDRESS:
ADDRESS-CITY: Meriden
ADDRESS-STATE-PROVINCE: CT
ADDRESS-POSTALCODE:
ADDRESS-COUNTRY: United States

Individual Band Results are as follows:

Band ----- QSOs ----- WPX
14 --------- 107 -------- 104
21 --------- 173 -------- 170
28 --------- 395 -------- 381
Totals ------ 675 ------- 655
Score 1,179,000

Now the story. First of all the bands were smokin hot JAs were 59 and a bunch both nights on 10. 15 wasn't so hot to JA Saturday night but I may have missed the opening. Tonight though the JAs were smoking on 15 and 10. And at the same time the South Americans were banging in too along with Europe at the end of the contest. I was hearing loud EU stations on 10 meters up until well past dark both nights. Lots of good stuff coming out of Asia and the Pacific some I worked some I didn't. Saturday all of a sudden 15 meters got very noisy, (band noise). I look up at the map and we were having a flare. We had an X1.0 flare and 10 and 15 meters flopped, (right in the middle of one of my QSOs). But it recovered quickly. 20 meters was strange during the day. Very noisy and very little DX. Some very strong stations but not many.

OK now the score. If you look at the total contacts you see 675, and look at the WPX you see 655, those are ALL the prefixes I worked and they are multipliers. I started out Saturday evening on 10 meters working JAs and doing my usual thing of skipping over the non multis to get the most bang for my buck I worked a total of 47 contacts and stopped.

Saturday I started up on 10 meters and again started working the multipliers because there were a ton of them. Somewhere along the way I got a brainstorm, ( really )? I wondered what would happen if I just went for the multipliers? I also wondered how far I could go before I "ran out"? Well I worked almost the whole contest with the exception of 20 contacts all multipliers. The non-mulits came early in the contest with the exception of one local who called Saturday and gave me a contact I was not expecting. It got a little slow the last few hours but I still was picking them up. I worked my last contact at 29:59:53.

I'm waiting to see how my log compares with those with about the same amount of contacts and also where my score falls with others and how many contacts and multis it took to get them there.

I usually try something different each contest most of the time I make it up on the spot. The name of the this game is Prefixes for this contest. That's the way I played this game.

Anyone else play this weekend? How did you do?

-73-