CQ160 SSB Report

I had not planned for a serious effort, just a little fun in CQ 160 SSB contest this weekend. And fun was exactly what was provided, together with some snow to clear at the station!

I decided to operate only for a few hours which finally ended up at a total of 12 hours casual operating. I was prepared for heavy QRM and complete chaos, but it was actually easy to find a hole in the otherwise crowded 40 kHz allowed band segment.

I picked  a tactic of working a few hours at a time, then take a few hours break to let the band fill up with new calls to work. This worked out well and I logged a total of 555 stations which made the QSO rate slightly higher than in CQ160 CW a month ago. A total of 60 countries but only 4 states where logged. The DX drowned in QRM and the ones found usually had trouble hearing on their end.

Topband, especially when limited to 40 kc, is not really suited for a SSB contests but nevertheless it was fun to dive into the mess and rely on the K3’s DSP filters to be able to make sense of the mess.

Another fun weekend on the air, 73!