“It was boring” Kris, ON1BN

The last weekend of October has one of the major contests, the CQ Worldwide SSB contest. It’s an easy contest due to the simple exchange of only your CQ-zone.

Points are calculated based on country, own/other continent and CQ-zones. The station of OT5A is located in Lier, near the city of Antwerp. Planning, scheduling of the operators, required site-maintenance is done well in advance. In the week before the contest all shacks are installed and tested and the final bugs are ironed out by the technical and the IT-team. The kitchen team is shopping for all the necessary food and drinks because having a well fed team is important.

I was scheduled for 40m and 10m. With the solar-cycle on it’s downward slope, 10m could become a challenge. The last few contests we ran, it was DX-heaven, open from early morning, till late at night with incredible pile-ups from JA and W. The 10m team-members checked the band rigorously every day just before the contest, and it didn’t look too bad.

I put VOACAP to work to predict the possibilities to work all the zones. 10m looked pretty meagre, but that would up the challenge for the dedicated team.

The western region of Europe was battered by a storm. The drive towards Lier wasn’t very pleasant due to the high winds, and we all hoped the antenna’s would hold. Fortunately they did survive the wind of 100km/h.

Jan ON1JV and I did the kick-off on 40m. Last time it took quite some time for callers to arrive, but this time the pile-up started soon after the opening. We were lucky to grab zones 1 and 31 already at the start. On 20m there was a change in scheduling so I planned 2 hours on the band. But when I arrived I was told they made just over 20 Q’s overnight. Pretty unusual that 20m was closed. So I called it a day and returned to our B&B for some extra rest to get ready for the afternoon run on 10m.

I got up a bit early since I was scheduled next to Tom PA5TOM. Tom is a member from my local club, recently got his HAREC license and is now allowed to operate without his previous license restrictions. The idea was to elmer Tom a bit on contesting, but he’s a quick learner, so it wasn’t necessary anymore. The afternoon on 40m is mainly European contacts.

Next on the schedule was 10m. Unfortunately the expected pile-ups from the US didn’t appear (VOACAP was right, hi), but South-America and the Caribbean were pretty good and loud. The band closed around 19:30 local time.

On Sunday-morning I asked to be scheduled for 10m to catch the opening towards JA. Well, conditions on 10m weren’t great towards zone 25 and we needed the country and zone. All of a sudden there was a 1 minute opening, enough to work a JA2, but the suffix of the JH1-station who called next disappeared in the noise and didn’t come back. Two more JA’s were worked a bit later, but again the openings were very short.

Lunch beckoned with the famous “ballen met kriekskes” (meatballs with cherries) were served. To die for, Yummmm.

After a short in-between session at 40m to fill the afternoon, it was time to head back to 10m for the closing session. Conditions were similar to Saturday, except the USA was a bit poorer, and the band closed again at the same time.

Next I went to 40m again for the closing session with Jan, ON1JV. We still had some work to do in grabbing multis. No new zones, but still some nice greyline DX to YB. The rest was mainly Europe again.

At 23:59:59 we went QRT. The higher bands already stopped and packed up their gear. The final raw score was 11,183,640 points (before correction) with 615 countries and 165 zones across all bands. With 39 zones, 15m had nearly worked all zones. 20m was a bit disappointing and 10m was as expected, not great. The low bands did fine, but that is the downward slope on the solar-cycle.

After we packed up everything and transported it to storage with De Ezel, the final dinner was served, fries and hamburgers. It’s where Kris said it was boring. Everybody fell silent for a bit wondering what that was all about, but then he said it was boring because nothing broke, hi. Good job by the techies!

Next contest for me will be the CQWW CW on 15m with ON4ALY and ON5AI. If the band is still equally good, we might be lucky and work all zones this time. I’m fired up for that. 73, till the next one.