Donations are accepted. We appreciate the help!
With band conditions slowly but surely trying to improve, organizers are hoping for another record setting turnout for this year's CQ WPX SSB Contest, which in 2009 had an all time high of 4,087 logs submitted.
"We are very excited about the future of the WPX Contest and contesting radiosport in general," said WPX Contest Director Randy Thompson on his WPX blog.
"The increase in sunspot numbers should improve conditions and enable smaller stations to be more competitive," said Thompson. "This should continue the trend of increased log submissions and we look for record number of entries on both modes again this year."
WPX has always been one of the more popular contests, and a look at this year's announced operations on NG3K's web site confirms this will again be a hard fought battle for top World honors in the Single Operator All Band category.
Fresh off a big score in ARRL DX, Tom Georgens W2SC will be back in Barbados at his 8P5A contest station for another SOAB HP run in a contest that he has dominated in recent years.
Georgens won the High Power category in 2006, 2007 and 2008 before finishing second in 2009 to Jim Sullivan W7EJ, who took his CN2R station to a first place World finish.
For Sullivan, it was a break from his recent string of single band entries, as CN2R owns the world records for Single Band High Power on 20, 40, 80 and 160 meters.
4L5A still has the record high score for single ops at 26.8 million points, set in 2005 from D4C.
One interesting note about last year's Single Operator results is the geographic breadth of the top four finishers:
One new wild card in the mix this year for top honors could be Andy Faber AE6Y, who will be operating from Aruba as P49Y.
Faber skipped ARRL SSB because of a family trip, but will be ready for a top effort this weekend.
"Our station has been pretty successful," Faber told radio-sport.net, noting record setting scores in this year's WPX RTTY and ARRL CW.
2009 CQ WPX SSB Winners
"The previous multi-operator rules had 3 classes that all allowed multiple transmitters," said WPX Director Randy Thompson K5ZD on his WPX blog.
"There is a real need for a true single transmitter category to provide more opportunities for meaningful competition among more stations."
Thompson says that many M/S logs and scores show the category has gotten away from the "Single" part.
"Logs from some high scoring MS stations show running on two bands during the first hours of the contest," wrote Thompson. "They are essentially operating M2 and either ignoring non-mult QSOs or working them and taking the point loss."
"This is inconsistent with the spirit of a category named Multi-Single."
The final rules decision focused on band changes per hour, which K5ZD argues is "simple and can be checked based on log data."
"We seriously considered the suggestions to create a new (fourth) multi-operator category," said Thompson, though that was ultimately rejected.
For much more information about the new rules and WPX, go to the WPX web site.
