ARRL 160 Contest: Battle Of Attrition

Last weekend's ARRL 160 contest is a bit of an oddball. Every single band contest has its quirks. The main one is that you can only work each station once, which is a little like ARRL Sweepstakes despite that one utilizing multiple bands. Also, like most ARRL contests, they are more like QSO parties where those outside the US and Canada work each other but others can only work the US and Canada. As a consequence these contests spark only modest global interest.

Of course any DX on top band is attractive and there is interest in that. But as a competition it is of little interest to me. ARRL tends to monomania on tradition founded in the world that existed in the middle of the twentieth century. That is their choice. For true 160 meter aficionados the CQ 160 contest in January is the one that matters.

That is a problem because with little global interest there is a pretty hard upper limit on the number of stations and multipliers you can work. Unless you have a good 160 meter station you will work little DX and indeed there is not a lot to work in this contest unless you are a big gun. The focus for most is on working each other and the farthest ARRL section multipliers. 

Geography is always important in contests and in this one it is those in the US midwest with the advantage, able to reach more of the participating stations than those on the coasts. It is worse on the west coast due to the larger population on the east coast. On 160 meters there is no skip zone to speak of so that linear distance matters far more than on the HF bands. 

For the same reason the east coast has an advantage working the small number of participating European stations, able to add those multipliers and points to their score in lieu of those far west multipliers. For example, I have similar success working W6 and western Europe. When DX conditions are good the country multipliers can really add up.

With limited DX possibilities and the prospect of a long grind through two consecutive nights I do not take the contest too seriously. I've done this contest a couple of times with a multi-op group at VE2OJ, but for various reasons I now prefer to do these 160 meter contests from home. In any case that operation did not go ahead this year due to the pandemic.

Although less of a marathon than the 48 straight hours of CQ WW this one is right up there. Nights are 15 hours long in December so the serious competitor should plan on up to 30 hours of operating and sleep during daylight. I operated 20 hours and that was plenty. That lack of dedication by itself guaranteed that I would not win. This is a contest that favours endurance over tactics.

My ~1000 contacts (dupes included) works out to an average hourly rate of 50. That doesn't look bad but this is not CQ WW. The QSOs are heavily front loaded, just as they are in Sweepstakes. In the first hour I had over 120 QSOs with a mixture of S & P and running. When I quit for the night after about 9 hours of operation my total was around 640. This is ⅔ of my weekend total for less than ½ the hours I operated. As you can conclude the rate falls rapidly after the first few hours of the contest. This applies to everyone and not just me.

It is the casual operators that make the difference. They might only come on for a few minutes or a few hours and they come and go throughout the weekend. If you aren't on at that time you will not work them, and if you don't work them you won't win. You must be there.

Some of the casuals -- which includes serious contesters who are not serious about this event -- choose to run or S & P, and often just one and not the other. Competitors must alternate between running and scouring the bands to maximize their take among the casuals. Of course those in an assisted category spend less time scouring by interrupting their running to click on and call these stations when they are spotted. This gets easier as the weekend continues because running rates get very slow indeed and there is no harm done by not CQing for 30 seconds. Of course after the contact you must race back to your run frequency before someone else grabs it.

Which brings us to the next issue. To maximize your score you must run, and in this contest that involves endless CQing later in the contest. If you are in a high power category, well, all I can say is that you don't need an outside source of heat to warm cozy in the shack on cold December nights!

That is one of the reasons I avoided turning on the amplifier and entered the low power category. It seemed wasteful for a contest that had limited interest to me. By running 150 watts I was able to give my new antenna a workout and discover how I would fare against others with good antennas in difficult top band conditions.

I would say I did pretty well. According to 3830 my placing in the low power category is #6 the last time I checked. That's good since those with a higher placing operated more hours. Had someone scored similarly with fewer hours invested I would have been spurred to see how I might have chosen better tactics. I believe that the antenna and operator performed well.

This is where I must make a negative comment about competitiveness in this contest. A contest that is won by the person with a decent station who operates the longest and CQs the most is a contest that is not a serious one. Skill and tactics should play a larger role in determining a winner.

Consider a shorter alternative with the same rules. By limiting the contest to a single night you could not win by merely nailing your butt to the chair. Tactics would be superior to endurance for stations and operators of equal caliber in the same geographic area. At its current length this contest is a battle of attrition. Stay awake longer than everyone else and you can win, even with mediocre skill and tactics. 

What kind of competition is that? Looping CQ's while you browse the internet is not a true test of ability. Yes, I know that's an exaggeration, though not by much. You do have to toggle the Beverage selector a bit and trim the RIT every CQ or two, or three. It's boring, yet boring wins this one.

In the CQ 160 contest I will be tempted to switch on the amp and try harder. For the DX if nothing else. In the meantime there is casual DXing on top band every one of our long winter nights. I was very pleased when one morning this week I worked a VK6 for the first time on 160. 

Absent a DXpedition to one of a couple French islands to the southwest of VK6 that's as far from FN24 as you can get. For me that one QSO was the equal in satisfaction to 20 hours of the ARRL 160 contest.