Big Gun QRP in ARRL DX SSB

As I wrote in my comments alongside my score submission to 3830, operating QRP with big gun antennas almost feels like cheating. Most QRP enthusiasts believe small is good, which applies to antennas and everything else, and not just the 5 watt power limit. I admire the philosophy from afar, and not so much when I turn on the rig. The only constraint with a QRP contest entry is the power level; they don't judge your philosophical purity. It's great fun to see what 5 watts can do in a contest when connected to antennas far above the average.

After a long respite I decided to enter a DX phone contest with QRP, even though my intention was to never do it again. It's just too painful. Since I had no intention of a serious entry in this month's ARRL DX SSB contest, I thought to myself: why not? Surely it can't be as painful as it was when I had a far smaller antenna system. Well, yes, it is still painful.

I am now more likely than ever to avoid using QRP in future SSB contests. The experience impresses on you the limit to what is possible with a wide, noise-filled 3 kHz bandwidth and power that is barely enough to get useful illumination from a flashlight or a desktop LED lamp!

In the following recap, I'll include what I believe are useful lessons for anyone contesting with a small station, QRP or not. I'll include links for several of the many articles I've previously written about small station and QRP contesting.

About the contest

When I made a splash in the CQ WW SSB contests with QRP in 2014 and 2015, I was using a far smaller station: a tri-bander up 15 meters and a few wires. Many of my contacts were with US stations simply because they were easier to work. There are fewer DX participants in the ARRL DX contests because they can only work W/VE stations. From many parts of the world it is hardly worth the bother.

My current station is far larger these days. But with Americans and Canadians worth 0 points and fewer DX stations to work than in CQ WW, score potential is lower. That lack is very noticable on all bands, and not just the low bands where working us is difficult from almost everywhere. 

I wish ARRL would tweak the rules to make the contest more inclusive. They could allow everyone to work everyone while keeping the current multiplier structure and differentiating QSO points for working W/VE versus others. There are several contests like this and it makes them far more attractive to all potential participants. 

With ARRL fiercely focused on tradition there is little chance the contest will improve and reverse its limited popularity outside the US and Canada. I know quite a few VE contesters that gave the contest a pass or participated only briefly.

It is what it is, so I did what I could to make the contest a worthwhile weekend's adventure. Working DX is always fun and I didn't want to avoid the contest entirely.

Why QRP unassisted

I made a similar choice in the ARRL Sweepstakes CW contest last fall. The nature of the contest and its somewhat tired traditional features no longer attract me. Yet it can still be fun by approaching it differently. 

Not enough stations to work? Operate with a handicap, and spread those contacts over a longer time span. Spice it up further by turning down the power. Multipliers and stations too easy to jump on with the steady stream of spots? Disconnect from the internet and put your hand on the VFO knob. Relearn how to find stations to work.

A few adjustments to one's standard operating style make the difference. In this way I turned a moderately attractive contest into a real test of skill, endurance and antenna performance. I doubled the fun by doing SO2R. Practicing operating skills helps with more serious contest entries.

Band by band performance

Band    QSO   Mult
 160      0      0
  80     19     16
  40     90     49
  20    147     64
  15    304     75
  10    326     70
        886    274

It should be no surprise that 15 and 10 meters are the friendliest for QRP. The atmospheric noise is low so a little power goes a long way. Since the high solar flux opened these bands for everyone, there were lots of stations on these bands, and they could hear weak signals easier than on the lower bands. 

20 meters was poor for most because stations spent a lot of time on the higher bands. Typical for solar maxima, signals on 20 are attenuated in the middle of the day due to high absorption. At times it sounded like there were more rag chews and POTA activations than contesters on the band.

The high band stacks were a big help. I could break many pile ups with them if I timed my calls well  and relied on an assist from propagation. There is a substantial skip zone over much of the eastern US for stations in Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America that gives Canadians an edge. Unfortunately there were times when the multiplier antenna, a side mounted TH6 up 22 meters, wasn't good enough with only 5 watts. In those cases I had to turn the big yagis south or wait for the pile ups to diminish. The additional 1 to 3 S-units from the big yagis made all the difference.

Splitting the stacks gave me the flexibility to move the rotatable yagis to directions where the gain was needed. This included Japan and the Far East, Asia, and the Pacific. Since I ran very little I didn't "spray" in multiple directions like I would with high power running. 

I had expectations for 40 meters with the big 3-element yagi. The QRM is extremely high during phone contests due to most of the world being crammed between 7125 and 7200 kHz. All I can say is that the yagi did its job. Many of the European big guns were worked on the first call. In the morning I had little trouble working JA, VK, ZL, KH6 and others. In the quieter spectrum above 7200 kHz I could work the multipliers to the south using the XM240 at half the height.

The big yagi isn't enough to run on 40 with QRP,  so I made few QSOs. My focus was to accumulate as many multipliers as possible. I am happy with my result.

I wondered if I'd work much of anything on 80. I can't work Americans in this contest, unlike in CQ WW. Every DX QSO was a struggle. With the vertical wire yagi temporarily out of commission I had to use the recently reinstalled inverted vee (30 meter apex). I am pleased to have worked as much as I did. Many DX stations didn't appear to have a directive antenna to help pull my puny signal out of the noise.

I met my expectation of zero contacts on 160. I did try a few times because you never know. My best result was "Victor?" I consider that a modest accomplishment!

Call everyone

Too many with small stations are hesitant to call weak stations. The thought being: if I can barely hear them, they'll never hear me. This is wrongthink. Many of those stations are also small, no different from yours. Or they may be in a very quiet area that is excellent for copying weak signals.

My philosophy is to call everyone. Sure, most of the weak ones will not hear you at all. The attempt costs nothing. More often than you may believe they come right back to you. I had that happen numerous times this weekend from fairly weak DX stations sending "kilo" as their power. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Phonetics

Noise, QRM, accents and fidelity all contribute to misunderstandings on phone. Also, English is not the first language for most. This is unique to phone since language issues are largely absent on CW, RTTY and digital modes. That may limit our ability to hold a conversation on CW beyond a hello-goodbye QSO or a contest exchange. Even that much can be a challenge on SSB. Weak signals make it worse.

The most common errors in the contest were V being heard as W, and 3 as 2. There was also the more common and humorous problem where the other operator would guess at my call. They'd be obviously trying each call listed in the Super Check Partial database that resembled what they had of my call. Each time they would hopefully ask "roger?" I'd say no, repeat my call and they'd try again. About half the time they would finally stumble onto the correct call and I'd shout back "roger, roger, roger!"

Returning to the problem of V and 3, this is really a problem with phonetics. For some reason, when I was poorly copied, "victor" would be heard as "whiskey". This is perhaps understandable with Slavic languages where "victor" and "wictor" are easily confused. But the confusion was not at all exclusive to those countries. I also don't really see how "two" and "three" are confused, yet they are.

In the latter case, counting out "one, two, three" worked most of the time. Using phonetics for V, I would try "victoria" since that usually works. Other choices were less successful. For example, in difficult cases with South American operators I would try "Venezuela", thinking that would be more familiar to them. That almost never worked. Novel phonetics rarely do better than the conventional ones, yet I had to try something in difficult cases. In several cases the QSO had to be abandoned. 

In another example, if they copy my suffix as "echo norway" or "whiskey norway" (or the better known "xray norway" of Gary VE3XN), I would repeat "victor norway" several times. Many would then change the call to something like "victor norway 3 whiskey norway." This could go on for a while. For the times when they successfully copied "victor norway" I would only repeat my prefix a few times. Thankfully that almost always worked.

Operating with QRP is like operating in dreadful propagation conditions. Except that everyone but me has good conditions!

Running

Those with small stations tend to S & P and never run. This is self limiting behaviour. There are quite a few big guns to work, and you can work them on each band. That may be good enough for casual contesters. But that's leave a lot on the table for the more serious competitor. There are many weaker stations to call and you'll never work those, who like you, never run. That includes a lot of DX stations.

Running can feel uncomfortable when you first try it. Some come to love it and will only contest from semi-rare locales so that they can run all the time. We all have our unique preferences and motivations. But if you want to do well in a contest you must do at least some running, even if you have a small station.

I left most of my running attempts to Sunday when everyone was hungry for more contacts; they'd already picked the low hanging fruit the first day. Once I get spotted, they click and call. I could tell when it happened despite operating "disconnected" when I'd suddenly receive a small flood of callers.

My best runs were on 15 meters. I expected that to be on 10 meters and I'm not sure why.  Although the rate was usually painfully slow, perhaps one contact every few minutes, they add up over the course of the weekend. It doesn't get boring because at the same time I'm hunting for stations with the second radio.

Many runs ended when my frequency was stolen by another W/VE station. They can't hear me and since I have few callers they can't tell that another station is running on the frequency. That's just a fact of life when you operate with QRP. I lose little by QSY'ing since the rate is slow. You must not waste time by fighting for the frequency since you'll always lose to the big gun. He won't even notice that there is a struggle!

SO2R

Operating two radios with QRP is less stressful than as a big gun. The runs are few and the rate is usually slow. I've done 2BSIQ on CW with QRP, but CW is far friendlier to small signals. I never tried it this weekend. I was running on one band or hunting stations on both radios. I would scale back to S & P on one band after becoming fatigued from the discordant racket in both ears or when conditions didn't warrant the effort.

My station is poorly configured for phone SO2R  since I don't like doing it. I made a few additions prior to the contest without attempting a full set of features on the second radio. I don't have the cables to pipe voice messages to the second radio and I couldn't be bothered. I dealt with it by only running on the first radio. 

I had another difficulty using N1MM Logger+ with this arrangement. For two keyboard SO2R, N1MM disables the keyboard feature to manually switch transmit focus. Instead you have to do it by pressing a function key or enter (ESM) to send the appropriate message. But I couldn't transmit messages from the PC. 

My workaround was to press a function key on the second radio keyboard that does nothing noteworthy (clear the RIT, in this instance). Since the mic is routed via the SO2R Mini, I could talk on the second radio once the focus was redirected. I used VOX because the foot switch is hard wired to the first radio. Pressing a function key on the first radio's keyboard switched transmit focus back to it.

Sound confusing? It worked pretty well after a few minutes practice. It was odd to send my call and report on one radio by hitting the enter key and speaking into the mic on the other radio. 

SO2R on phone while running on one or both radios is difficult since you have to at least speak the other station's call, or computerize voicing of the letters and numbers. You can often get away with just banging on the keyboard when calling stations -- "VE3VN" and "59 ON" -- except when message wasn't copied well.

I bypassed the BPF (band pass filters) for this contest and I rarely encountered interference from the other radio. QRP allows you to get away with that most times. It is easier on SSB than CW because the phone band segments are such that you rarely tune across your harmonics.

Breaks

When you can't run very well, there is little tying you to the chair. You miss little if you step out of the shack for a few minutes. I did that a lot in the contest if only to maintain my sanity! If you've read this far you will understand how the frustration builds with the constraints I set for myself. I would eat, sleep, catch the news, walk outside, read my email or talk to someone. The big guns will still be there when you're refreshed and ready to resume.

As a big gun, in my case running a kilowatt to the same antennas, breaks almost always hurt your score. Casual operators might only appear for an hour and if you're not CQ'ing at the right time and place you won't work them. I doubt I lost more than a few contacts and multipliers from all of my breaks. 

I paid no attention to the clock when I took a break. If I wanted one I took it. There is no time restriction in this contest -- you can operate the full 48 hours -- so there is no benefit to making breaks at least 30 minutes to have it count as official off time. I don't know how many actual or official hours I operated, and I made no attempt to find out. 

The point is, if you feel you need a break, take one. You'll feel better for it, your family will appreciate the visit and your score as a small station, QRP or not, will suffer very little. You can do it and still be competitive.

Did I win?

Do I care? No, not really. As I said up front, mine is not the typical QRP station. Beating those with small stations is not an accomplishment. Going by what has been reported to 3830, my score exceeds others in my category by a wide margin. Not everybody submits a score to 3830 so I won't know for sure until the logs are adjudicated and the result announced. That will be many months from now.

One lesson worth mentioning is the generosity of so many competitive DX contesters. They would hold the horde at bay as they took as much time as needed to copy my call sign and exchange. This is time they could use to work 2, 3 or 4 other stations. I won from that experience and they won my respect.

I did have fun producing a respectable score without the intensity of using high power like I did in the CW contest two weekends earlier. Maybe I'll do it again, and maybe not. When the opportunity arises, I'll give it some thought.