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"The propagation was excellent here," said Jeff Briggs VY2ZM/K1ZM, who right now has the 7th top claimed score in Single Operator High Power for CQ WW SSB.
"The advantage of "higher bands" being open is that more "little pistols" will be able to work you," said Yuri Onipko VE3DZ, who was just ahead of VY2ZM from a Zone 2 operation at VE2IM; Onipko will be at PZ5TT in CQ WW CW.
"I had some of the best rates I have ever had (in 35 years) from the Midwest on 15 and 10," said Mike Wetzel W9RE.
"I was blown away by the conditions even in a remote place like Mongolia," said Ken Claerbout K4ZW, who operated from the JT5DX multi-op.
The big openings of 10 and 15 meters certainly contributed to higher claimed scores over 2010; Jim Sullivan W7EJ went from 15 million last year to the top single op score so far of 19.3 million from CN2R in Morocco.
Still the good bands didn't allow anyone to come near the CQ WW SSB record set by Jeff Steinman N5TJ back in 1999 from EA8BH of 25.6 million points.
So what do the different conditions mean for CQ WW CW?
After a number of years where 10 and 15 meters were often nothing more than second radio multiplier producers, this year's CW test could be a repeat of the SSB leg, where those bands are wide open at the same time.
"Strategy is simple," said Onipko VE3DZ. "To try to win one needs to run."
The more bands are open - the more opportunity to run."
"The changing propagation on the high bands (versus the importance of the lower bands) made for a very different contest STRATEGY wise," said Briggs K1ZM, who admitted he "did not capitalize on it as well as VE2IM did."
Capitalizing meant how well you did on the second radio, which isn't easy to use when the top stations are running 200/hour on the main radio.
"Because I was running so much on 10 and 15 I really had to use the 2nd radio to look for SA and Caribbean mults," said Wetzel W9RE.
With the high bands being open, the low bands suffered - not only because more people were up on 10 and 15 meters, but because the propagation wasn't very good either.
"If high bands open it’s like opening a trap door on low bands," said Scott Redd K0DQ, who will be trying his hand at CQ WW CW from WW1WW in New Hampshire.
"I did find 40 and 80 to be unspectacular, probably in part to a lack of participation on those bands with the high bands in such good shape," wrote NV4B on 3830.
"Unfortunately the low bands really did take a hit. With the high bands open for so long many operators just never made it to 40M-160M, plus propagation just seemed to missing," was the report from Joe Rudi's NK7U super-station in Oregon on CQ WW SSB.
Will the sunspots stick around? If they do, you can see this will be a much different contest than in recent years when we compare sunspots in mid-November of this year to years past:
So you can see that CQ WW CW has not enjoyed these kind of solar conditions since the 2002 test - the year of the Aruba shootout, when CT1BOH defeated K0DQ and W2GD.
What will we have this year?
EF8M (RD3AF) - SOAB HP
V26K (AA3B) - SOAB LP
CN3A - SO Assisted HP
WP3C - SO Assisted LP
OK3C - SO Assisted QRP
F5MUX - SOAB QRP
P33W - Multi-Single
CR3L - Multi-Two
C5A - Multi-Multi