VP6DX (N5IA) Leads Single Ops In CQ 160 SSB; CN3A Top Multi-Op

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted March 24, 2008

The appearance of the VP6DX Ducie Island DXpedition during the CQ 160 SSB Contest was welcomed by contesters around the world, but probably no one thought it might provide the overall leading single operator score.

But with the log deadline at the end of March, VP6DX op Milt Jensen N5IA does own that lead, after making 1,163 contacts with 94 multipliers for 1.06 million points.

Jensen told radio-sport.net that one of his fellow VP6DX ops said afterward that he initially thought Jensen's plan to operate CQ 160 SSB was "crazy."

"Operate a 160 Meter SSB contest from the South Pacific in the middle of the summer and expect to be competitive? No way!!!" he told Jensen.

Jensen not only seems to have set a new Oceania record, but he for sure has denied Nick Lekic VE3EY a repeat of his 2007 CQ 160 SSB victory.

In publicly claimed scores, VE3EY has a strong second showing of 741,788 points, a big jump from 2007, when he set a VE3 record of 478,842.

"This time I ended up with a score much better than anticipated," Lekic told radio-sport.net.

"I was hoping for about 500k, but the conditions were good and the activity was high."

The activity was very high for N5IA at VP6DX: "The pileup was tremendous," Jensen said.

"It was not easy to pick out the calls, but the with the 10 kHz spread it did work quite well. Not too bad where the nearest contacts are 3,000+ miles distant."

Jensen said the VP6DX beverage system made it much easier to pull out calls from all over the world.

"The station performance plus the best conditions I could have hoped for from the southern hemisphere in the middle of summer really made the results what they are," said Jensen.

"With 90% of the contacts being made through the equatorial static belt it was a combination of all the variables lining up in my favor."

Looking back on the DXpedition as a whole, and his 22 hours operating CQ 160 SSB, Jensen was very pleased.

"The idea was to make VP6DX not only a contest mult but also be a DX appetizer for even the non-contest crowd. All to get them in the contest log."

While VP6DX leads the SOHP competition, the leader in the World low power category is is Tony Ramos KP4KE, the defending champ in the QRP division. Ramos ran up 367,813 points from 640 contacts in Puerto Rico to take a big lead over Teddy Jiminez HI3TEJ, who is in at just over 200 thousand points.

In the US, Peter Briggs K3ZM still leads the single operator high power category, with 397,491, 35k better than Jerry Rosalius WB9Z, with John Evans N3HBX not far behind.

One record in the US that might have been broken was in W6, where Jim Stevenson W6YI used a brand new two element phased array to possibly break the W6 record.

Stevenson's 144,060 points might even give him a top 10 USA finish.

As for the US low power battle, it's a close race between your radio-sport.net correspondent NS3T, who racked over 70 thousand points. Fellow PVRC member Bud Governale W3LL is second, with over 68k, as that goes to the log checkers.

CN3A Leads Multi Ranks; K1LZ Tops in USA

The world Multi-Op top spot right now is in the hands of the three-man CN3A team in Morocco, which posted a claimed score of 753,342 points.

Stefano Brioschi IK2QEI and Matteo Carisi IK2SGC joined with Bacha Saad CN8WW to grab 718 contacts and 106 multipliers.

While they fell short of their goal of beating the African Multi record, Brioschi told radio-sport.net that their setup worked very well.

"We realized that our beverage system was very powerful especially with the US/VE," said Brioschi, but he said too often the North American stations didn't hear CN3A.

"Too many US/VE are running only "local" stations."

Second in the world and first in the US with a record breaking score is Team K1LZ, led by Krassy Petkov, which claimed over 536 thousand points, thanks to a new antenna setup in Massachusetts.

K1LZ was joined by YU1AU and YT3WW for the CQ 160 SSB test, as they worked 1,284 stations and 120 multipliers, including 62 countries.