2009 CQ WW DX SSB Contest: Sun Remains Quiet; Same Old Story On Band Conditions

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted October 18, 2009

For the third straight year, the CQ WW SSB Contest arrives with propagation depressed on the HF bands, which will again force contesters to scramble for QSO's and multipliers, all courtesy of a still quiet Sun.

"The sun is now in an exceptionally quiet period," says Frank Donovan W3LPL.

The interesting part about that quote is Donovan said that a year ago, and little has changed since then in terms of solar activity and propagation for ham radio contesters.

In 2009, the sun has had no sunspots on 79% of the days so far - a higher rate than the 73% for the entire year of 2008, which was the least active year for sunspots since 1913.

"This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century," said solar expert David Hathaway.

That should mean another year where 20 meters will be very busy, and contacts might be especially limited on 10 and 15 meters.

"Pretty much the same conditions as last year," said Tim Duffy K3LR.

Add that up, and those who can take advantage of the low bands at night stand a good chance to gather up some good mult and contact totals.

"The best suggestion I can offer to folks is to have as good lowband antennas as you can personally manage given your situation and be sure to work hard on 80 and 40 especially at night," says Jeff Briggs K1ZM.

"It is quite easy now with simplex operation for most stations to run up a large contact total on both 40 and 80 phone and there will be tons of multipliers there for the taking."

The reminder from Briggs about 40 meters is especially important, given that this is the first CQ WW SSB Contest to be run since international Short Wave broadcasters were to stop transmissions below 7200 kHz.

"The interesting variable will be 40 SSB," says Rich DiDonna NN3W, who argues the band might actually be worse this year as opposed to 2008.

"Instead of having half of the stations running split, everybody is going to want to avoid split and crowd into the 7125 to 7200 range," DiDonna told radio-sport.net, saying that could lead to "bedlam."

"Given how good 40 has been propagation wise, assume that what you hear on about 225 kHz of 20 meters will be crunched into 75 kHz of 40 meters," said DiDonna.

Still, there figures to be a lot of action on 40 meters, not only between North America and Europe, but also for those searching for needed zones down in Australia and New Zealand.

"LF action Down Under is sizzling at present and many are tipping that the CQWW SSB this year will see major activity from those northern hemisphere stations needing the down under Zones in the contest," said Trent Sampson VK4TI in an e-mail to radio-sport.net.

Sampson said claimed scores from the recent Oceania DX SSB Contest proved that propagation on 40 and 80 is in good shape.

"The LF capability of many of the regulars has been increased," said VK4TI, adding that "Several of the VKs are sporting new 80M capacity."

As for the Top Band, that presents its own set of challenges at this time of year.

"160M is hard to predict in October," says Briggs K1ZM, who will operate again this year from his VY2ZM station in Canada.

"It can still be a bit noisy and since it is not yet Winter, signal levels in most of North America will not yet be at mid-Winter levels."

"For most people, 160m will not be a huge contact total band but, rather, it should be viewed as a multipler band - for both zones and countries," Briggs added.

The same might be said of 10 meters, but the problem there is that it's never quite clear when that band might open, making it all the more important to check it frequently during the day.

10 meters definitely figured into the calculus as to why some stations did better than others in 2008, as for example, HC8A got an opening on 10 that other stations simply did not.

HC8A finished with 544 QSO's and 16 zones on 10 meters, while CU2A had only 39 contacts and 8 zones. Third place 8P5A never was able to grab a major opening into the US from Zone 8, as he made just 178 contacts and 12 zones from Barbados.

One opening on 10 for HC8A came in the final hours of the contest, as he put 235 contacts in the log during the 2000-2200 time frame. That was more than all the 10 meter contacts combined for his nearest pursuers, CU2X & 8P5A.

A look at some of the DX cluster spots from the last week shows some activity on 10 meters, as TL0A in the Central African Republican showed up, along with spots for stations in Asiatic Russia and the Pacific.

As for who should have the edge overall in the 2009 CQ WW SSB, a quick look at last year's Top Ten in Single Operator High Power shows a wide and varied distribution of zones from around the world.

While HC8A (N6KT) was the winner from Zone 10, after that, there was no evident pattern.

Three stations made it into the Top Ten from Zone 5: VY2ZM, VE3EJ & K5ZD.

Three Top Ten stations were from Europe - two from Zone 14, CU2X & M6T. ES5TV also made it from Zone 15.

There were two Zone 20 stations in the Top Ten: 5B4AII & SV9CVY.

Only one station made it from Carribean Zone 8, that was 8P5A.

What zones will produce the winners in 2009? Find out and join the action in the CQ WW SSB Contest, which runs 48 hours from 0000z October 24 to 2400z October 25.