EF8M Leads In Bid For WPX CW Repeat, But No Gigantic Assault On CW Record Book in 2010

By Jamie Dupree NS3T  radio-sport.net 
Posted June 7, 2010

While big chunks of the CQ WPX SSB record book were dismantled in 2010, the same did not play out in the CW leg, though the top claimed scorer in the Single Op High Power cateogry may end up making some changes after all log checks are in.

The best story may have come from Andy Faber AE6Y, who operated P49Y in Aruba to a top World Single Op Low Power score of 9.07 million points.

Faber couldn't even work the first seven hours of the contest, because of a major power outage on the island.

"As you can imagine, it was pretty odd at 0715z to give contact number one to a surprised KR7X, who responded with number 658. Ouch!" wrote Faber on 3830.

But instead of throwing in the towel on the weekend, Faber went to work and and churned out 2,736 contacts with 821 prefixes.

Unfortunately, it still left Faber short of the 2003 World Record in the LP category set by CT3EE (DF4SA) of 9.4 million points.

I did have a strange experience with the power failure," Faber told radio-sport.net. "I suspect that I would have been ahead of record pace with those additional 7 hours, particularly since conditions on 40 were quite good from the Caribbean - but, you never know."

Meanwhile in the high power category, instead of defending champ Valery Komarov RD3AF at the controls of EF8M this year, it was his friend Alexander Gimanov RZ3AZ who seems headed for another EF8M victory - and maybe a new World record as well - as he pushed EF8M to 19.2 million points, a full 2 million over the mark set in 2009.

But for many others, "Conditions seemed poor" was an observation heard a number of times on the 3830 reflector afterwards, and that was reflected in many other top scores, which were down from last year.

For example in 2009, Alex Avramov LZ4AX again operated the Penn State University club station KC3R (K3CR) to the top claimed score in the United States.

But his 6.8 million claimed score was far short of the Single Op USA record that Avramov set a year earlier of 9.59 million.

"A tough one," was Alex's post contest comment.

In Europe, the top score in 2009 was a record 10.2 million point effort at CR2X by OH2UA. This year, the top claimed score so far is Felipe Lopes CT1ILT who operated CR6K to just over 7 million points.

Lopes though found good conditions on a number of bands, especially 10 meters, which opened strongly from Europe to both Asia and South America, while North American stations found limited openings.

Conditions though certainly didn't hold down on entries, as WPX Contest Director Randy Thompson K5ZD reported that more than 2,000 logs had been submitted 11 days after the end of the contest.