Big Station QRP in Sweepstakes

ARRL Sweepstakes draws me for its nostalgia. When I started contesting in the mid-1970s domestic (North American) events were more appealing than DX contests. Operating during a solar cycle minimum from the edge of the mid-continent auroral zone (VE4) the potential for DX contest success was bleak. Sure, we tried, but it was hopeless. It is no surprise that Sweepstakes was for us the premier event on the contest calendar.

I got as high as Top Ten in both the CW and Phone events (low power category) in 1978. The next year I moved to VE3 and transitioned to multi-op DX contests. The DX potential was excellent in eastern NA and the solar cycle was just passing its maximum. In any case, I had no station of my own so I did the contests the station owner preferred. When I built my own station a few years later I barely gave Sweepstakes a thought.

I dabbled in Sweepstakes in the years following my return to the hobby in 2013. When I built my current large station I continued to dabble in it. In 2020 I got more serious about it but in the QRP category. I thought it would be more interesting that way and I believed, wrongly, that the slower rate would avoid the Sunday doldrums.

I operated SO2R as before with the absurd attenuator on the FTdx5000 I built for a previous QRP contest. This year the towers and antennas are substantially complete, and everything works. Some of the controls on the operating desk are slapdash but it's usable.

Results

From the claimed scores posted to 3830 I am pleasantly surprised to find that I am, at least for now, in first place. It's unlikely that there are higher unreported scores so it will come down to log checking. My claimed score is over 119,000, with 721 contacts and 83 sections. I missed the clean sweep by not working Newfoundland.

In the QRP Unlimited (assisted) category W2GD had 10% more contacts and a clean sweep. He's easily the superior operator though part of the difference may come from finding more stations faster by clicking on spots. It's just curiosity since we are not in the same category. I am encouraged that the gap is smaller than in 2020, even if my improved station is the reason.

Winning often comes down to picking a category that better operators and those with bigger stations ignore. Some contesters deliberately pick their category where they believe they have a good chance of winning. Plaques are not my motivation and, indeed, all the plaques I've won are gathering dust on a shelf. Displaying them is not important to me. If I win a first place plaque in this contest it will suffer the same fate. I value the experience, not the prize.

For those who enjoy contest reports I'll now dive deeper into this weekend's contest experience.

Activity level

From skimming some of the post-contest reports on 3830 there is a widely held view that activity is lower this year. That is also my sense. Nostalgia motivates those in my cohort of older contesters. More younger hams are entering Sweepstakes that I'd have once believed, but it is not enough. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic and next year will be better.

When you can only work a station once, regardless of band, you soon run out of stations to work. When I went to bed late at night I had over 400 contacts in the log. All of Sunday garnered only another 300. The Sunday grind in Sweepstakes is dreadful. As an unassisted operator the constant trawling of the bands is fatiguing. Many quit, and I don't blame them. I stuck with it because I was doing reasonably well and I wanted to see if I could beat my score from two years ago.

As I said, nostalgia is at play. To increase rate the band rule would need to change or the contest duration reduced. The chance of that happening is quite low since ARRL strongly believes in preserving tradition. It is arguable that today's premier North American contest is NAQP.

All you can do on Sunday is keep the CQ machine going and scour the bands so that you can work casual operators who briefly appear to make a few contacts. Most casual operators S & P so you must run or they won't find and work you. QRP doesn't change that. That many operators ignore weak signals is no excuse.

SO2R

SO2R is difficult in Sweepstakes. The long exchange and frequent requests for fills requires greater skill to coordinate active QSOs on two radios. I am getting better but I am still clumsy. The lower rate you have with QRP also lowers SO2R mishaps. But even the top competitors have a low rate on Sunday!

S & P on two radios is challenging because you are constantly listening and copying in both ears. It is easier to run on one radio and search on the other. You must S & P more with QRP but I still recommend the mixed strategy. I would run on both radios when the rate was really slow or I needed a rest. It's important not to be lazy and persist with low rate dual running. You must spin the knob in this contest.

Run vs. S & P

You must both run and hunt in any contest to be competitive. The question is where and when to do each. With SO2R you can do both, which helps but that is not a full answer.

At the contest start I tend to S & P a lot. In Sweepstakes I do the same but I focus on just one radio. That is, I ignore the second radio for a short time because SO2R in this contest is awkward when the rate is high. And the rate is high at the start.

Every running station you tune in as you scan the band is a new one. That's pretty well guaranteed. A higher rate than running is typical unless you are a rare multiplier or you have a big signal from a perfectly positioned location. I did S & P for most of the first hour, taking advantage of propagation on the high bands. After that I ran on 40 meters and continued to hunt on the high bands. The running was slow so switched back to running on the high bands. 

In this part of the continent 40 meters is usually more active during daylight. The excellent high band conditions that persisted well after sunset was likely responsible. It certainly influenced me. QRP can go a long way on the high bands where the noise level is lower.

After those first hours I tried to keep running on one radio. That can be slow with QRP in the first hours of the contest since, like me, everyone had ample strong stations to work. They lost nothing by skipping my weaker signal. Running became more productive as the evening wore on.

What to do on Sunday when both running and hunting deliver low rates? There really is no good answer. The better strategy is regular band changes to catch more casual operators. In Sweepstakes you can, in theory, work stations on any band so it may seem as if it doesn't matter. It does matter since many operators tend to focus on a particular band and you must go there to work them. I probably should have spent more time on 10 meters.

West coast stations favour the high bands to work the masses in the densely populated east. Those with low power and poor antennas do the same since they don't fare as well against the atmospheric noise on the low bands. That is not an absolute rule so you have to be flexible. This weekend the low bands were fantastic. Signals from the south and west edges of the continent were strong on 40 and 80 mters and the noise was low. 

The high bands were notable for unusually strong back scatter signals. I was able to work a surprisingly large number of east coast stations with my big yagis pointing west. Most times that is only possible with high power. S & P was better than running to work back scatter due to my weak signal.

On Sunday nothing worked especially well and my rate plummetted. I had to keep spinning the knob to find stations, and the run radio might only garner a QSO every 3 to 5 minutes. Even so it helped to keep running to catch the small number of casual operators yet to be worked. 

Running caught many of the rare multipliers I needed since they were S & P.  Casual operators in rare multipliers often avoid running because they don't enjoy dealing with an unruly pile up. Pile up behaviour deteriorates when everyone is chasing one of the final multipliers needed for a clean sweep.

Benefitting from spots

Every so often the silence on the run radio was replaced by a wave of callers. I couldn't see when I was spotted but I sure could hear it! The giveaway was that those callers sent a precedence of U or M in the exchange. That is another good reason to have one radio always running. 

An amusing effect of the spots is that I am frequently called by stations that can't hear me. It happens to me every time I operate QRP in contests. They click on a spot, hear silence and toss in their call. Only after doing this a few times do they realize they can't copy me. Then they click another spot and they're gone. I suppose it wastes my time but in Sweepstakes that's rarely a problem because the rate is so low.

The mouse that roars

This is typical of what many of my QSOs sounded like:

Me: "...Q VE3VN 72 ONE"
Them: "Pr?"
Me: "Q"
Them: "Q?"
Me: "QQQ"
Them: "TU..."

When one of my 5-element monoband yagi (3 elements on 40) perched in the lower stratosphere is pointed in your direction you will hear my 5 watt signal. I am the mouse that roars. I wonder how many of them suspected me of slipping in a few extra watts. Most QRPers go small in all aspects of their stations, and 5 watts into a wire hanging from a tree is never very strong. 

I've operated QRP on 160 meters in contests and worked a surprising amount of DX. As I was setting up the station on Saturday afternoon I called one of the current DXpeditions on 20 meters and logged them within a few minutes. 5 watts can do pretty well with big towers and antennas.

There is no substitute for power. QRP is -13 db and -23 to -25 db compared to low power and high power contest participants, respectively. You can't make up for that deficit with big antennas. But every decibel helps! I was routinely working the west coast on 40 and 80 meters. More than a few operators commented on my big "Q" signal.

There are the inevitable downsides of a signal weaker than most others. My run frequency was regularly stolen. Perhaps they couldn't hear me or decided to muscle in anyway. Half the time they didn't send "QRL?" before punching the CQ button. This is expected with QRP and I didn't fret over it. I would QSY, often less than 1 kHz. The only concern was that if I had been spotted I might lose a few contacts.

Whither QRP redux

I keep telling myself that contesting with QRP is too painful and I should stop doing it. Yet it can be a lot of fun, especially with big antennas. I expect that I'll keep doing it occasionally when I have an itch that needs scratching.