CQ WW WPX CONTEST CW 2018

My first CW WPX with new multibander. It has improve worthy 2/6 points 40m, my main band.

Unfortunately CONDX was as in the middle of solar minimum. I also had few periods of watching to meteo radar and to the sky due to strong local storms in near surroundings.

Strong QRN and QSB, high number of NA stations digging from noise. Direction, where my ears was relaxing, was to JA on Sunday late afternoon on 20m. No pipleup, but a lot of worthy Asia mults without QRN bangs. K9AY loops helped to read some directions on low bands, but sometimes it takes longer to find proper antenna setting. Lots of AGN requests decrease QSO rates. No any long period of real pileup. Openings of 15m and 10m was nice, but in WPX contest not so important… Looking to other guys 20m/40m QSO numbers I probably favor 40m too much compared to 20m.

Mr. Murphy again was stopping my PA due to random relay timing problem. I was trying to fix it, so I lost almost 1,5 hours. Not fully successfully, but so-so. I had to cancel the alarm repeatedly hundered times during the contest, sometimes after every PTT…

Thanks to all who participated.

Final score:   3 681 782
Category:      SO AB HP
Rank:          WW #64    EU #23    OM #1

Call: OM7RU
Operator(s): OM7RU
Station: OM7RU

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: JN98OQ
Operating Time (hrs): 35:41
Location: Northern Europe

Band    QSOs
--------------------------------------------------
 160:    77
  80:   274
  40:   767
  20:   564
  15:    68
  10:    30
--------------------------------------------------
Total: 1780 Prefixes: 760 Total Score: 3,771,880

Used equipments:
Yaesu FT-1000MP MarkV Field
ACOM 2000A (1,5 kW OUT)
MicroHAM microKeyer, MicroHAM StationMaster
DXLog.net

Antennas:
160m: Vertical (35m tower + 2 elevated radials)
80m: OptiBeam OB1-80 rotary dipole @34m
AD-3446 multibander:
40m: 3 elements
20m: 4 elements
15m: 4 elements
10m: 6 elements
K9AY RX loops

73!
Riki, OM7RU