NX5M, WD5K Keep ARRL 10 Meter Lead at Log Deadline

By Jamie Dupree NS3T, radio-sport.net 

Riding a weekend of "spectacular" conditions on 10 meters, the NX5M multi-operator group has by far the best score in the world at the log deadline for the 2007 ARRL 10 contest.

While most of the world found slow going at best on 10m, the NX5M crew was knocking out contacts all weekend long.

"I would never have thought it possible," said Robert Pack NX5M, whose team made 2,243 contacts for 687,700 points, almost 200k ahead of fellow South Texas multi NR5M.

In their 11th straight year of Multi-Single competition, Pack said the opening hours were "by far the best night in our history. First hour netted 277 QSO's....818 QSO's by the time we shut down the first night.""

How impressive was their score? The closest pursuer to NX5M was the NR5M group at 490,052. The best DX Multi score was handed in by LR2F at 319,424 points, third best in the world.

Further evidence of how skewed the propagation was in the 2007 ARRL 10 was that only two single ops outside the US claimed more than 50,000 points: LU5WW at 135k and LU1HF at 88k.

As for the single operator categories, one of the few bucking the trends that favored Texas was Scott Jasper NE9U, who used the big antennas at W0AIH in Wisconsin to grab the top Mixed High Power score with 314,580 points.

"We may have the Mixed HP from deep in the Black Hole!" said Jasper, who was most worried about W5 stations.

"During the contest I suspected there would be some big Texas scores," Jasper told radio-sport.net.

"We had good propagation to Texas for much of the contest, but that also means they had good propagation to (the midwest.)"

While Jasper leads the high power category, he actually does not have the top Mixed score. That goes to Mixed Low Power leader Tom Johnson WD5K, who rolled up 351,648 points from Dallas.

The CW only category is in the hands of a familiar call, as Richard King K5NA rang up 1,222 contacts for 313,344 points, just a few less than the Mixed HP leader.

"Friday night was the best I have ever seen conditions and I had a 184 first hour QSO rate," said King. "Conditions stayed extremely good until about 0400Z Friday night and then it tailed off. All day Saturday was slow with little peaks in propagation where you might hear a new area for a few minutes and work a new multiplier or two," said King.

Last year, King spent much of his down time reading a book. This year he read a bit of two books.

"I didn't read as much this year as I did the year before because it was much harder to hear callers this year. The conditions and the Sunday noise forced me to concentrate on the radio more closely," King said after the contest.

For the most part, this contest was not about good propagation, as descriptions like "brutal" and "truly ugly" or "painful" usually don't apply to an ARRL 10 Meter contest, but they were common postgame contests this year.

"It was messy," said Bob Epstein K8IA. "Worst contest conditions I have ever experienced on 10 meters during any contest. That dates back to the mid-60's.""

Epstein won the World CW low power title last year, but this year, he was scraping the bottom of the barrel for any contacts in a multi-op effort with his wife Sandy N7RQ, as they made only 24 contacts during the day on Sunday.

"It could have been worse, but not much," said John Barcroft K6AM. "What can you say about a 10 meter contest where most of the contacts were made after sundown."

"I thought I was in the Texas QSO Party," added Barcroft. "We sat here listening to them run the entire country."

"There will be some amazing scores out of Texas this year," Epstein K8IA predicted accurately.