Tough Propagation Marks 2008 ARRL DX SSB

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted March 3, 2008

The 2008 ARRL DX SSB Contest was pretty much as advertised, a phone slugfest on crowded bands made even more jammed by bad propagation. At times it seemed more like a North and South American QSO Party than anything else.

"Seemed like the very worst overall conditions in nearly 40 years," said John Crovelli W2GD, who operated N2NT's station this past weekend instead of making a foray to P40W in Aruba.

Crovelli totaled only 840,000 points, cutting his contest to just a 24 hour bid.

"The bands just weren't cooperating and I get no joy from endless F1 button pushing."

"It was rough," said Jim Nitzberg WX3B, who battled for every contact he could get on 20 meters from the W3LPL multi-op in Maryland.

"We didn't work nearly as many guys as we did last year, and I never even had a good run going," said Nitzberg. "Best rate was just over 100/hour. It was work!"

Those observations were repeated the world over, as propagation suffered especially between Europe and North America, though the sunspots did offer some hope, as at least there were a few more contacts this weekend on 10 meters.

15 meters though was in the pits, as even leading operators like Randy Thompson K5ZD couldn't chalk up 100 contacts on what's usually the "money band."

"Worked a handful of Europeans on 15m Sunday morning," Thompson said in his postgame 3830. "Nice year to skip doing a serious effort."

"Two weeks ago, right after the ARRL DX CW contest ended, I said, "well propagation can't get much worse than this!" I was wrong," said Bob Epstein K8IA.

"This weekend was worse for us out here in the west. In fact, this may be the worst contest conditions I have ever experienced," Epstein wrote.

Like the conditions, the early scores only trickled in, as maybe some competitors were searching for aspirin to deal with the self-inflicted SSB headache from the weekend.

Top single operator scores included Rich DiDonna NN3W scoring 1.88 million in SOAB HP.

DiDonna was one of many East Coast ops wondering what happened to the Europeans on 20 meters after sunrise on Saturday morning.

"I've got one stack on Europe and one stack on the skew path and I'm not hearing anything," DiDonna told another Washington, D.C. area op on Saturday before 20 finally opened up.

"I've never hit the F1 key 10,000 times in a weekend - until this weekend," DiDonna said in his 3830.

Just behind NN3W is Ken Claerbout K4ZW, who claimed 1.85 million, a tight race for now for both members of the PVRC.

On the DX side, KH6LC reports 3.23 million points, but that seems likely to be less than some of the top Carribean ops, including defending champ 8P1A (W2SC) who was heard running at a good clip much of the weekend. The same goes for defending low power champ John Bayne P40A/KK9A.

On the Assisted side, some familiar USA calls are leading the way as Malcolm Davenport KI1G leads with 1.6 million points K3WW and AA3B trail in second and third.

In the multi ranks, the scores were down as well, with one example being Team K3LR. They claimed 4.1 million in Multi-Multi, dramatically less than the 7.8 million claimed from just one year ago, but still tops in the US so far.

“I have a feeling that even with a low score due to conditions, that this could be a win for the K3LR team," said Tim Duffy K3LR.

"We are fortunate to have some of the very best competition in the Multi Multi class," Duffy added.

In fact, if K3LR does emerge as the SSB M/M winner, that would five wins in a row in the ARRL DX Phone contest.

"Conditions were very poor," said Duffy, whose team is up on W3LPL by about 300 thousand points. "All of the bands were in bad shape."

"Other than 20 meters, all of the bands were much poorer than any DX contest in recent memory," said Frank Donovan W3LPL.

Despite the second place claimed score, Donovan was very pleased with his team's results.

"For the difficult conditions we faced, our team performed well," Donovan told radio-sport.net.

"We made big strides in improving our competitiveness on 20 meter CW this season, but we're not as much improved on 20 meter SSB as we had hoped. We'll be much more competitive on 20 meters on both CW and SSB next season," added Donovan.

The story was the same across the USA for most of the multis, as the depressed conditions held down scores across the board.

"In my opinion, these were some of the worst conditions on all bands...and because the high bands were so lousy, there was not the level of activity on any bands," said Rick Daugherty NQ4I. "The numbers from all the M-M entries were way down."

That was especially true on the West Coast, where Ken Keeler N6RO reported that his team's 1.19 million claimed score "was the lowest score in this contest" in 30 years of contests from their California QTH.

"Not only multi, but it's lower than any Single-op score from here!" Keeler wrote in his 3830.

"Conditions were abysmal," said Dennis Egan W1UE, whose multi-op posted a respectable score of over 2.6 million points, most likely in third for Multi-Multi behind K3LR and W3LPL.

"I've done 160 meters in probably 50 contests over the past ten years and this past weekend 160 was the worst I've ever heard it," said Egan.

"We never had a 100 QSO hour on any band the entire contest. The MUF seemed to drop below 80 meters for awhile on both nights."

Check back for updates through the week! - NS3T