160 Meter SSB Contest

I participated (for a total of 45 minutes) in the CQ 160 meter SSB contest on Friday and Saturday evenings.  160 is a real struggle for my short vertical and under-sized radials (probably way less than 1% antenna efficiency on 160), but I was encourage by my results in the CW version of the contest, so thought I would give it a try.  SSB signals need a LOT more bandwidth (over 50 times) than CW, so the resultant increase in broadband noise at the receiving end severely limited my efforts!  I could work some (but not all) signals who were a true 59+, but no one else could hear me.  All my contacts were with US stations:  I could hear VA7MM quite well, but he couldn’t hear me!  My furthest DX was Idaho and Colorado (they must have had a low noise level there).

I posted my meager results (10 contacts, 350 points) on 3830 and gave credit to IHF.  At least I wasn’t last!

73

Roger

VE7AP