CQ-WPX (CW) results with RGO One

I had intended to use the CQ-WPX (CW) contest as a way of looking at the RGO One's receiver performance in crowded band conditions but my planned "20 minutes here, 20 minutes there" turned into about 11 hours of operating time on all bands 10-80m.

I'll write up my impressions of the radio itself soon but, long story short, the little rig has a fantastic receiver and was a joy to operate. Weak signals next to strong ones? No problem. De-sensing in the presence of numerous strong signals? Doesn't happen.

The contest was quite fun and, along with CQWW, is my favorite. Activity levels were high, due in part to conditions on 10 and 15 meters being poor - everyone funneled down to mainly 20 and 40 thus concentrating activity there. Fortunately, conditions on those bands supported propagation to DX on all continents. Even 80 meters, with our summertime QRN, was alive with several strong stations from EU easily worked before the QRN made me hit the Band switch.

Overall, it was great to see so much CW activity in the Age of FT8.

The first hour or so was used familiarizing myself with the RGO One - experimenting with the filter parameters, playing with the memories and just tuning to and past stations without bothering to work them in order to see how suddenly they disappeared as I tuned by. I did make a video of some contacts and of the tuning to and away from strong signals and will post that with the RGO One review in a few days.

After that, we were off and running. At some point, an RCA connection on the back of the RGO One started looking lonely so I connected a cable with the other end going to the KPA-500. They worked perfectly together and I was QRO for the rest of the contest.

Here are some stats from N3FJP's contest log:

Zones worked -  24
Continents worked - All
DXCC entities worked - 61


Band:      Contacts:
 ----              ----
   80               9 
   40           175 
   20           314    
   15            43
   10              5
 Total         546
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