9-10 December 2023
Update 26/11/2024: After many delays due to the ARRL web page and database being hacked (was actually a ransom ware attack and they ended up paying but still lost data!) the results of this contest has finally been officially announced on the ARRL web page, here are the results for the first 20 stations in the CW QRP category.
2023 ARRL 10m Contest
results
I am quite happy with my second place especially since I only spent 9.9 out of the 48 hours in the contest. The station who won would be difficult to beat, Madeira is very close to Europe, has a sea only path to the USA and very few local stations so all his QSO's are high scoring ones. Even with a QRP signal he will be strong in EU and North America. seems like in the property market location is everything! Anyway, was great fun and I am planning on competing again this year (2024)
I initially planned on only working a few stations
during the ARRL 10m DX contest, mostly for fun and to hopefully add a few DXCC
entities to my collection.
After the first hour or two I was having so
much fun that I decided I will make a more serious effort and enter the
contest. Unfortunately this had a few implications. I , again, like during the
CQWW CW contest, started the contest running my normal DX logging program. The
problem with this was that the program was not in contesting mode but even
worse it had hundreds of other contacts already in the log. This result was
that many stations came up as duplicates when I had worked them sometime in
the past and not during the contest. When the program reported a duplicate I
had to check the date the station was last worked before making or not making
the contact. This not only resulted in wasted time but also in 1 duplicate
contact.
Since I already had a bunch of QSO's in the log I decided to
live with this and fix the problem after the contest, this turned out to be
easy.
I also did not have my seating setup correctly for contesting,
the radio and the logging computer keyboard were not directly in front of me
and the radio was slightly too high, I worked like this on Saturday but Sunday
morning, before the band opened, I quickly moved things around a but for a far
more comfortable Sunday!
Report on ARRL 10m contest 2023, not great conditions but fun!
Day 1, Saturday 9 December 2023
After the fun I had in thee recent CQWW CW
contest I was looking forward to this, both for hopefully collecting a few "new"
ones but also to actually compete. The last time I tried to compete in this
contest was in 2014, see the results and report
HERE, it was fun but due to my mom falling ill I only ended up
spending 5 hours out of the 48 on the air making 372 QRP contacts. It did
result on a first place in class in Africa and 7'th in the world.
Unfortunately it looks like this weekend won't be as productive, the recent
solar CME's have really messed up the bands with the prediction for 10m only
being Fair during the day and Poor at night. We will see, as I write this it
is still morning and the band is totally closed, it might just open up
sometime this afternoon but I do not expect strong signals.
Propagation predictions for today, not great for
10m!
Early evening, the band opened up better than expected, it was not
spectacular but still fun even running 5W. First I had a quick opening to the
far east and then it moved west to Europe. By around 1300Z the signals dropped
and I took a quick break. By the time I got back at about 1400Z the band
started opening to the east. By the time signals dropped to the point where it
became difficult to hear them at 1800Z I had managed to work quite a few
interesting stations, I also
worked the usual bunch of US and Canadian stations slowly building not only
QSO numbers but also multipliers. There was even a Wyoming
station in the batch, hope he QSL's.
I did have a small opening towards
the west at around 1900Z but it only produced 8 more QSO's, mostly from
Canada.
So the total QSO's stand at
125 for the day, not a lot but with conditions less than optimal I spent a lot
of time working the rarer stations, more for my DXCC totals than the contest
but at least they are multipliers so that helps.
Day 2, 10 December 2023
Unfortunately conditions only improved slightly on the second day,
this was as predicted.
Sunday conditions very similar to Saturday.
Even though the prediction for 10m on Sunday was still fair to poor I could
hear a few more stations but most of them were just in or above the noise.
There were around 15 - 20 stations that were very loud both days, always wonder
how that happens, do the have special antennas or do they run huge power? I
think in most cases it is good antennas since they hear well as well, you can
work most of them on first call.
The morning started with a weak
opening to Japan and the far east, it only produced around 10 contacts but it
did add 3 multipliers, one for Japan, Singapore and India each. After that I
worked a few European stations but after scanning up and down the band a few
times I gave up. After lunch I could hear more stations in Europe but
unfortunately I had already worked most of them.
As the afternoon
progressed the totals slowly increased but far slower than I would have liked.
By late afternoon I started hearing US and Canadian stations so the rate
increased a bit. There were also a few surprises like Caribbean stations and
one from Columbia.
By 1830Z I finally shut down as the signals were
dropping and every single station I could hear was already in the log.
The totals were not great, this is the third time I have competed in this
contest and by far the worst I have done. I think it is mostly due to
conditions, the previous two times were at solar cycle peaks and I had
stations right across the band many with strong signals.
I ended up
with 225 QSO's (and one duplicate), there were 40 countries and 46 US states including a very weak
station from Wyoming, I just hope he got my call correct as I had to repeat
many times.
Here are some statistics on the contest:
ARRL 10 Meter Contest - Summary and Statistics for ZS2M
Time
ON : 09:56 Hours
Time OFF: 24:54 Hours
QSO/Points
Summary
MODE QSO
CTY S/P DUP
PTS AVG
----------------------------------------------------------------
CW
225 40
46 1
900 4.00
---------------------------------------------------------------
TOT
225 40
46 1
900 4.00
Score: 900 QSO Points x 86 Mlt. =
77 400 Points
QSO by Continent
Cont.
10 Tot. Perc.
-------------------------------------------------------
EU
69 69 30.7%
AS
18 18 8.0%
AF
3 3
1.3%
OC 0
0 0.0%
NA
131 131 58.2%
SA
4 4 1.8%
-------------------------------------------------------
Totals
225 225
Best Rates
Best
QSO/time QSO Period
----------------------------------------------------------
10 min
54
9 1507...1516 09/12
20 min
48
16 1458...1517 09/12
30 min
42
21 1458...1526 09/12
60 min
34
34 1454...1553 09/12
120 min
26
52 1454...1644 09/12
All my
equipment worked well, I used the little R928+ radio again. Since I was
running a wire antenna this time due to my still "loose from the rotator" Hex
beam I did not have the antenna issues I had during the CQWW CW contest. My
EFLW antenna worked well, it has a bit of gain on 10m, I use the little
ATU-100 HF tuner and it worked perfectly.
Looking at the scores posted by other competitors on the
3830scores page it appears that I am not the only one who found the conditions
difficult. Looking at the scores posted there I should end up in the top 10
work wide in the QRP category and with a bit of luck maybe in the top 5, we
will see!
I enjoyed the contest despite the difficult conditions, when
signals are weak every contact becomes a little victory! At least I did not
have that horrible QRM I had on the Sunday of the CQWW CW contest. I am
looking forward to the next contest and I am already planning a few
improvements to my station.
Other than the CWT tests I suppose the next major
contest will be the CQWW WPX contest, 25-26 May 2024, a contest I really enjoy
and have done well in in the past. I might just try a SSB contest again, the
CQWW WPX SSB contest a month earlier than the CW one would be a good candidate
but I will NOT be running QRP!