The 2020 ARRL DX Contest
In January Mike KC2EGL asked me about upcoming contests, and I asked him why he was asking. He said he thought it would be fun to do one of our tag team contest efforts again. For those who don't know, our tag team effort consists of me working someone, then Mike and I exchange seats at the key and he works (or tries to work) the same station, after which we go back to our original seats. That got harder as we got older, so now we just connect a pair of headphones and a pair of paddles in parallel and remain in our seats.
I said the North American QSO Party would be a good one for our tag team effort. Long story short, we did it and had a lot of fun. I had so much fun that a little later I asked Mike if he would like to try a tag team effort in the ARRL DX Contest in February. He said yes. At this point in the sunspot cycle, we didn't have high expectations of rolling up a lot of contacts, and we didn't although considering the sunspot situation, we didn't do all that bad.
We wound up with 219 QSOs in 50 countries from all six continents. I made 9 QSOs that Mike didn't, and he made 2 that I didn't, so I had 113 and he had 106. He worked 1 country that I missed (HK) and he missed one of mine (GM) so we each worked 49 countries. We each made the full contest WAC.
I didn't start marking the QSOs that we got bang-bang back to back with nothing in-between (missed calls, other QSOs, etc.), but when I did start noting them, they were IR2Q VP5K VP9I KP3DX 9A1A. There were other close calls, but took a repeat of our calls to make the QSO. Others missed the first call, but got it the second time, and so forth.
By band, my QSOs were: 15-10, 20-80, 40-20, 80-3. Mike's totals were similar. By continent: AF-8, AS-4, EU-51, NA-37, OC-1, SA-12. By CQ Zones: 5-1, 6-2, 7-4, 8-30, 9-9, 10-2, 11-1, 14-25, 15-25, 19-1, 20-1, 25-3, 31-1, 33-8. Stations I worked first time ever: 20.
Some interesting moments in the contest were as follows. Finding 15 meters open was surprising or maybe not as big contests normally do open up the higher bands although we didn't hear anything on 10 during brief checks. It was good to hear and work Scandinavian stations again as they have been largely absent here of late. Likewise with Russians although we only heard them and didn't work any. I made QSO number 100, 101, and 102 with PJ2T who is my most often worked DX station. Mike says it was frustrating hearing some stations that didn't hear us despite them being very strong. Often that was due to the other station having big pileups. Sometimes we would go back to them later in the contest and get them right away.
There were other moments that don't come to mind right away except for the Japanese and Asiatic Russian stations. Mike and I were talking about Asia and figuring the best time to try to work it would be around sunset so we planned our meal so we could be on the air around that time. We really wanted to work Asia since we easily worked the other five continents much earlier in the contest. As we thought, we got on the air around 6PM local time and it didn't take long to find a Japanese station, although it did take some time with repeating my call quite a few times, but JA6LCJ made it into my log. Mike was not so fortunate as LCJ just could not get the E in Mike's call. I really wanted Mike to get that WAC, but the JAs were now fading out for the first day of the contest. So it would have to be day two. Again we planned on definitely being on the band a little earlier that second day. So we got on around 5:30PM. At first we didn't hear any JAs, but before too long, JA7ZFN showed up, and I let Mike have first shot at him. It didn't take long for him to hear and work Mike for his WAC. I then tried, but couldn't get him. I did hear and work JH1GBZ a little later, and Mike worked him also. Next it was RT0C who was quite fluttery, but strong, and he did work both of us with several repeats of our calls.
We both enjoyed doing the contest together. Actually without Mike being here with me, I probably would have only made a couple contacts for my streak. We are also wondering if conditions may be a sign that the sunspot minimum might be close to coming to an end. I think conditions to Asia and also Scandinavia may have been an indication of that. Stay tuned to find out. Now we're thinking of doing another tag team effort in a future big contest.
