The WARS club competed in the 2022 CQWW SSB contest over the weekend of the 29/10, 30/10 and 31/10. We used the club’s contest callsign VK2W
We had 8 operators attend for all or part of the competition period plus a couple of interested observers, including Bruce VK2ZPN.
The operators were –
Barrie VK2IBE
Stephen VK2RH
Skip VK2ALR
Erik VK2EJH
Raffy VK2RF
Sam VK2HAU
Jeremy VK2JEZ
Fred VK2WS
At the end of the contest the log shows 233 QSOs and a claimed 90589 points.
We did not compete in this contest in 2021 due to COVID lockdowns. In 2022 we had marginally fewer QSOs than in 2020 – 233 in 2022 vs 262 in 2020.
This year there were times when the bands were rather dead from early to mid/late morning.
We had a greater proportion of the QSOs made on the higher frequency bands of 15m and 10m and this year we had 0 contacts on 160m. The 160m band seemed to be affected by very wideband noise and the few times I checked 160m during the day, there were no discernable signals on the spectrum scope.
There was quite a noticeable shift towards the higher frequency bands in our QSO count for 2022. The attached charts reflect this. No doubt this is due to the increasing sunspot count.
The log file for this contest is attached (or it is in the files section – I am not sure how Facebook is handling this).
Also notably, at Robertson, we appear to have made a significant step towards solving the perennial problem of inter-station interference. This interference problem made working in a multi station – multi band contest very trying and this interference was blocking many attempts at completing QSOs. The interference has now been reduced to the point that it is virtually unseen except where directly related second and third harmonics are involved from the transmitting station. Even then the effect is only as wide as the signal being transmitted (a few kHz for SSB) and does not affect the whole band, which was the issue we were previously experiencing.
Hopefully the developed solution holds out for the upcoming CW contest too.
Please note that the CW equivalent of this contest is to be held from 1100 26/11/2022 to 1100 28/11/2022. The WARS club will be competing in this contest from the same location in the Southern Highlands. If you wish to participate, please let us know.
73 Fred VK2WS
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