Adventures in Amateur Radio

The 2023 CQ WW DX contest was this last weekend and I decided to try and be a bit more competitive than in previous years. I once again ran as single-operator, assisted QRP running on 5W SSB. They key to my activity this year was deploying the 15m Moxon antenna up about 7m. I used the S9V31 vertical for other bands. The contest starts at about dusk on local time. I operated for several hours but only counted 18 QSO’s by the time the upper bands faded. I had just one or two QSO’s on 40m and 20m and the bands were very crowded. My first 4 contacts were in Japan on 15m using the Moxon.

I woke up before dawn on Saturday and tried working Asia on 40m while keeping an eye on the 15m and 10m bands. The 15m band opened up right after sunrise and I worked stations in Europe and the Carribean throughout most of the morning. I did notice that 20m almost completely died out and 15m was also showing fewer stations on the band scope but 10m was going strong. A quick check on the internet shows a mild geomagnetic storm had struck which may have affected 20m in particular. I brought down the 15m Moxon and replaced the wire set with 10m. My QSO count started to rise on 10m. I stayed on 10m until the band died shortly after sunset. I didn’t work many QSO’s on Sunday due to other activities. Overall, My performance on this contest was the best I’ve had with 106 QSO’s claimed and a score of just under 30k. Here are some stats:

The beam headings are particularly interesting because they match up with the beam position. Last year I came in #2 in North America and #17 worldwide in this category. QRP on these DX contests on SSB is a real challenge. Gain antennas are the key to success.