Same Old Story As ARRL 10 Meter Contest Returns For 2009 - When Will The Sunspots Come Back?

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted December 7, 2009

After a first half of November that saw some hopeful signs of activity on the Sun, the last few weeks have been quiet, leaving contesters with a familiar lament for the 2009 ARRL 10 Meter Contest.

"Conditions are getting worse since CQ WW SSB," says Jorge Diaz CX6VM, who will again be leading Team CW5W in this year's contest, the defending DX champ in the multi-op category.

"It's beginning to sound like a broken record," said ARRL Contest Manager Sean Kutzko KX9X in a letter sent to winners of certificates from the 2008 contest, "Yes, we have no sunspots."

As this story was published, the sun had not shown off any sunspots in two weeks, as 76% of the days in 2009 have been sunspot-less, a higher rate than 2008, when there were no sunspots on 73% of the days, the highest rate since 1913.

But while propagation on 10 meters has suffered because of the lack of sunspots, participation in the ARRL 10 Meter Contest has not gone down, as the number of submitted logs in 2008 was up 19% from a year earlier.

"Contesters are a very resilient bunch of operators!" said Kutzko.

10 meters did have some openings in both the SSB and CW legs of the CQ WW contest, but it was nothing to write home about for most hams, as memories are growing fuzzy of times when this contest was wall to wall signals from around the globe.

For example, just eight years ago in 2001, Jim Neiger N6TJ won the ARRL 10 Single Operator title from ZD8Z on Ascension Island, making 3,874 contacts for a final score of 3.33 million points.

In 2008, the highest score in the whole world was 435,488 points, a mixed mode high power single operator entry from John Rodgers WE3C in Pennsylvania.

Rodgers put 1,163 QSO's in the log after log checks - 30% of the number of contacts Neiger made - showing just how depressed conditions have become in recent years.

Looking at the evidence from the DX cluster in CQ WW CW, there were only a handful of minimal openings between South America and Europe, and only a few North American stations were able to bridge the Atlantic to EU.

A review of the band summary numbers on 3830 shows that not one single operator in the US made 100 contacts on 10 meters in the 2009 CW test. The best on the DX side was Bernie van der Walt ZS4TX, who made 496 QSO's.

The number on 10 meters were much better overall a month earlier in the CQ WW SSB contest, where the band opened between South America and Europe, as well as Asia and Europe, leaving most in North America on the sidelines to watch.

"They were clearly enjoying enhanced E and F skip that we in NA could only dream about," said John Crovelli W2GD, who watched the DX cluster while at VP5T.

"Based on the callouts, the EU/AS and EU/AF paths were open with a vengence, and intra-EU callouts were popping fast and furious. All of this was later confirmed seeing so many EU and AS M/S and M/M entries with 100+ countries."

"Could some of that spill over into the 2009 ARRL 10 Meter Contest? Fire up your rigs...and find out for yourself!" said Kutzko of the ARRL.

And as everyone knows, when the focus is solely on 10 meters, suddenly more opening are discovered than maybe in a big DX contest.

"The band might be dead, but once all that CQ'ing starts it seems as if that is seeding the e-clouds and suddenly the band is full," said Robert Pack NX5M before last year's contest, as his team is again the defending champ in the Multi-Op category.

That's five straight victories for Team NX5M, as they again will be the favorite in the 2009 ARRL 10 Contest.

The ARRL 10 Meter Contest begins at 0000z December 12 and ends at 2400z December 13.