ARRL DX Contest SSB

Call: VE8EV
Operator(s): VE8EV
Station: VE8EV

Class: SOSB/20 HP
QTH: Inuvik, NT
Operating Time (hrs): 28

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:          
   80:          
   40:          
   20:          
   15:          
   10:          
-------------------
Total: 1018    94  Total Score = 287,076

Club:

Comments:

I thought this would be a good year to go single-band 20m.  I still think it was the right choice but the band conditions had me pulling my hair out most of the time.  The band was open to Europe for almost the whole weekend but not many are awake during my best openings in the wee hours before their sunrise. I would frequently run out of callers and have to give up and come back later.  The solar flares and and aurora would often make for very slow going at times.  N1MM says almost 23 hours of off-time but a lot of that was just when no one was answering. There also seemed to be very few JA's about and only one lonely ZL heard from all of the South Pacific despite spending a good chunk of time beaming out that way. In contrast to the propagation over the pole there was hardly any North-South propagation except for late Sunday afternoon when I scrambled to find as many Caribbean and South American mults as I could.

High point(s): The handful of African stations that kept popping up in the middle of their night, almost like a "midnight peak" on both nights.

Low point: I overshot a nap overnight on Saturday and instead of having Europe all to myself the band was packed from top to bottom with loud EU stations working the USA East coast shortly before 1300z. When I finally found a spot to squeeze into and got a run going some sort of solar wind anomoly wiped out the entire band in a matter of minutes!  Eu was completely gone so I turned the beam to see if I could scare up some South Pacific stations.  After a dozen or so unanswered CQs I pulled off my headphones and turned to find the XYL standing at the door of the shack holding a bleating CO detector and looking EXTREMELY unimpressed...

All in all, not too bad considering the flux numbers, the solar flares and the geomagnetic situation but I find I'm missing the early days of the cycle when the sun was a bit calmer.

73
John VE8EV