2009 CQWW CW Contest: 0000 UTC, November 28 through 2359 UTC, November 29.
Three operators arrived from Reykjavik to operate the contest. Yngvi – TF3Y, Kiddi – TF3KX and Oddur – TF3OO along with a Gourmet Chef who had planned the feast for weeks.
Conditions were rather poor, not a single sun spot during the weekend made conditions on HF rather poor and in addition there was some Auroral activity affecting the lower bands.
Despite this 4525 contacts were made in 48 hours of operation.
You may listen to the activity from TF4X:
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The menu was fantastic. On Friday we had Tom Ka soup with Halibut followed by real-Vanilla ice cream and cake, on Saturday the menu was pigeon breast, Elk meat with carrots boiled in orange juice and Sunday we had icelandic mountain lamb fille, with baby tomatoes braised in olive oil and maple syrup garnished with fresh Timian.
The Arctic King awed us with the performance – 1270 QSOs were made on Top Band and was only matched by 20M where 1306 QSOs were made using an array of Rhombic antennas.
We used Win-Test contest logging software which performed flawlessly on 5 computers during the entire contest.
We used a feature of the software called Targets Tracking, which showed us real-time graphs on the screen of our progress compared to last year´s effort. Right from the beginning things were going much better than last year and this was very inspiring throughout the 48 hours.
This graph shows the over-all difference on an hourly basis compared to the effort of 2008.
This graph shows the hourly over-all rates compared to 2008. 2008 in grey, 2009 in violet.
This picture shows the zones worked on all bands.
The Icelandic record in the Multi/Single Category was set by TF3IRA in 1980 at the height of the Sun Spot Cycle.
That record stood at 2,169,760 points. They made 3004 QSOs and they worked 85 zones and 231 countries to accomplish this.
We beat the 29 year old record handsomely as can be seen in the summary.
It is interesting to note that Yngvi, TF3Y and Kiddi, TF3KX were operators when both records were set.
Highlights of the operation was working a Pile-up of JA stations on 160 meters – this is the first time in history that JA/TF QSOs are made on Top Band during this contest.
KH6 (Hawaii) was worked on 80 meters for the fourth time in TF history that I am aware of. Prior to this, only Boggi – TF3TF (SK), Yngvi – TF3Y and Gudmi-TF3SG have worked Hawaii on 80 meters.
It was interesting to note some extremely strong poor signals that obliterated parts of the bands along with some strong EU stations that seemed to be completely deaf. It took me 46 minutes of constant calling to raise one of these stations on the low bands. It is absolutely necessary to have separate receive antennas for the low bands (160/80) to be able to operate there with any kind of efficiency.
A very successful weekend is behind us and a what a good omen of things to come.
Our SoapBox comment to 3830 was as follows:
Comments:
This was the first CQ WW with TF4X being active. TF4X is a
special call issued to the TF4M station. The latest addition, the
phenomenal Arctic King 160m antenna took us by surprise. Almost as
many QSO’s on 160 as on 20. Numerous new Beverages and zero noise
level on RX. The strength of the station is displayed by low band
performance. First time JA pileup for us from TF on 160m in CQ WW.
Propagation was relatively good as we had little Aurora and definitely
better on the Saturday. According to the raw score the 29 year old M/S
record from TF was broken by 1.1 million points.
