The single operator section of the WPX Contest is limited to 36 hours.

This is good news as it means you can take full part in the Contest without completely knackering yourself, as is the case with trying to operate for 48 hours in a CQWW CW.

Following a few hours pre-Contest snooze, the first operating session started at 00z and went straight through to 18z. A one hour break for a meal was followed by another four hours before going QRT at 23z on the Saturday evening.

After a full night's sleep, operating started again at 07z on the Sunday. Conditions seemed relatively poor at early on Sunday, so a further break of two hours was taken in mid-morning. A final one hour meal break was taken on Sunday evening, before operating through to the end of the contest at 24z. Making in total 12 hours of QRT.

Conditions on 20m were good with plenty of stations to work throughout the contest. The 'prefix' multiplier makes WPX an interesting contest in that a continuous trickle of new multipliers can be worked while running. S&P was often a waste of time. The fact that a new multiplier prefix worked is not exotic in DX terms does not matter, just as long as it's a prefix multiplier.

Juicy stuff that called included VI9NI as well as a couple of KH6's, two KL7's, a KG6 (Guam) and a KH0. There were several Chinese stations active, as well as the odd item of DX such as 3W9JR and JT1CO. JA's trickled in and out throughtout the contest. There was never a pile-up of JA's, but just a steady stream of JA's calling at different times.

In total 882 prefixes were worked just on 20m. Very few multipliers were worked on S&P. Most were worked just by plugging away at the CQ's to either north-east or north-west.

G3TXF SOSB 20 HP claimed score CQ WPX CW Contest :

2,350 QSOs + 882 mults (prefixes) = 4.27m points