W6YI On Track For Another Multi ARRL Sweepstakes Double; VY2ZM (K1ZM) Leads SSB Single Ops

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted November 29, 2010

While operators on the East Coast of the United States and Canada tend to dominate the top places in major contests, that usually isn't the case with the ARRL November Sweepstakes contest. But in 2010, Jeff Briggs K1ZM turned that conventional wisdom on its ear with the top overall score in the SS SSB test.

"An East Coast station winning the SS on either mode is kinda like a turtle found sitting atop a fencepost," Briggs told radio-sport.net.

"Whenever you see that happen, you just gotta know that he had a lot of help to get there!"

As for how that applies to this year's November SSB Sweepstakes, Briggs got a lot of help in terms of propagation, which allowed him to zero in on the major population centers of the East Coast, allowing him to finish with over 363,000 points off of 2272 contacts.

That favorable skip zone allowed Briggs to average almost 100 contacts per hour over the last 12 hours of the contest, pushing the VY2ZM superstation ahead of his western pursuers.

When you look at Sweepstakes results over the years, there aren't that many from East of the Mississippi - especially along the East Coast.

One of the exceptions was John Crovelli W2GD, who won SS CW in 1978 from New Jersey.

"What a gas that was," Crovelli told radio-sport.net, just before his weekend CQ WW CW bid from P40W in Aruba.

While Crovelli was happy to go down memory lane, he also got a good chuckle from VY2ZM's effort, saying that VY2 is not really the same as the East Coast of the U.S., something VY2ZM readily acknowledged after the contest.

"I am about 550 miles airline from Boston - about 700 miles airline from NYC and about 900 airline miles from metro Wash DC/Northern VA - which means I can do things that a station in Maine and/or Mass or MDC cannot do on 20M because the closer in population centers are all inside their SKIP ZONE. Briggs has a 20k point lead over Mitch Mason K7RL, who ended his four year win streak in the unlimited category by changing over High Power this year.

"I switched to Bravo this year to try and earn as many points as possible for WRTC 2014. The 20% haircut off the top for going unlimited was a bit steep!" Mason told radio-sport.net.

Mason is just over 2,000 points ahead of Steve London N2IC, who chalked up a huge score in his first SSB Sweepstakes in almost 15 years.

"I'm satisfied with how I did, but a little disappointed," London wrote on 3830.

"Despite pushing hard on the 2nd radio for S&P QSO's, after the first 6 hours, my hourly rates were down significantly from what I expected," London added.

It was still a very good showing, coming a few weeks after London had been unable to participate in the CW Sweepstakes, ending his winning streak in that contest.

Another Double Winning Effort From Team W6YI

With the scores all in from both legs of the November Sweepstakes for 2010, it looks like the Multi-Op led by Jim Stevenson W6YI will win the SSB & CW contests for a third straight year.

While W6YI was outscored in claimed tallies by VY2ZM, K7RL and N2IC, no Multi-Op threatened their dominance in the SSB test, as W6YI leads Team W0NO by almost 27k points.

"K6AM and N6MJ did an outstanding job in establishing our starting rates, inspiring us all to push harder," Stevenson wrote on 3830 after the contest.

"Our sweep was accomplished at the 6th hour."

This year could also see a sweep in the School Club competition, as the Stanford University Amateur Radio Club station leads in both SS CW and SSB.

The most recent effort was 228,320 points for W6YX, courtesy of Michael Heideman N7MH and David Wolfe AA6XV.

N7MH went solo in the CW leg at W6YX as well, giving the school the top score in the School Club category.