CQ World Wide DX Contest is one of the oldest and most anticipated contests in the World. With over 70-years history, this highly regarded contest supported by CQ Magazine in the US draws together a crowd of over 35,000 ham stations from all corners of the world competing for a top standing in their respective categories.

For Thailand, CQ WW SSB is definitely the year’s highlight for Thai HAMs and many stations from all over the country joined the event. For E2A team, we readied ourselves for the competition by improving the station set-ups, and installing more rotors and antennas to accommodate Multi category. This year, we had planned to enter under Multi Operator Single Transmitter category. Our team of operators include E24OYI, E25KAE, E29TGW, E20NKB and E21EIC. An operating schedule was setup where the operators rotate through 2- to 3-hour session throughout the 48-hour contest period.

As we have now entered the 25th solar cycle, a fairly good propagation was observed particularly on the 10 and 15m high bands. The downside was that Thailand was still at the tail end of the monsoon season so we were frequently interrupted by heavy rainfall and thunderstorm throughout the competition.

The contest started at 07:00am (00:00UTC) on Saturday 30th October 2021. Our E2A team started off with E21EIC (Run) and E25KAE (Multi) before changing to E24OYI (Run) and E29TGW (Multi) at noon. E2A team completed over 1,000 QSOs during the first 12 hours despite being forced to take breaks because of intermittent thunderstorms.

The improved propagation enabled us to hear, something which is quite rare for Thailand, the US East Coast on 15m band including K3LR, K3ZO and W2CG; and we also managed to make QSOs with the West Coast on 10m band such as N6RV, W6YI, AI6LY, WQ6X, NA2U, N6OSM, K6NA and N7WA.

Grey line propagation saw many Caribbean stations coming through on the 15m band particularly 9Y4D, KP3Z, P43A, PJ2T, PJ4K and PZ2YT; as well as stations from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay in the South America on 15m and 10m bands.

During the contest, E2A also welcomed distinguished guests who came to cheer us on including HS1JNB, E23FXX and HS0ONI

Other stations joining in the CQ WW DX Contest in SSB mode from Thailand include:-

● Multi-Single Category
HS2UPR (Ops: HS7BHK HS2QJJ E25OKO HS2UPR)
HS6VW (Ops: E22ZXX HS1NIV HS5ZBR HS6VW)
E21AK (Ops: E20SJC E23RVG E22DBE HS3WRH E24SMC HS0QFL E24VQE E21ZVO E22DKG E23SGP E20MZU E22SXX)

● Multi-Two Category
HS8HEX (Ops: HS8HEX HS8NKB HS9QZJ HS8LOG E29NKB E29KYL)

● Single operators
E20NGF, E20WUE, E20XMG, E21YDP, E24OEE, E25ETT, E29AHU, HS0ACS, HS0ZDX, HS3NBR, HS3PIK, HS3PJF, HS4MLV, HS5NMF, HS5ZLD, HS6OKJ, HS8JWH, HS8KAY and HS8MOM

The author of this article joined his first CQ WW DX Contest in SSB mode in 1997 under the callsign E22AAA, and then in 1998-2000 under HS0AC which is the club station callsign of the Radio Amateur Society of Thailand under the Royal Patronage of His Majesty the King (RAST) at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). Throughout the 24-year period, the author has never missed any CQ WW contest - not even once.

Back to E2A team in this 2021 contest, we stuck to the operating plan and schedule throughout the 48-hour period down to the last second. We made a total of 2,384 QSOs scoring 2.58 million points. We face some obstacles in the low bands, specifically the 80m and 160m bands. Thailand’s bandplan only permits the use of 3500-3600kHz and thus we were unable to operate in SSB mode on the 80m band unless it was to contact other Thai stations at 3600kHz. As for 160m, because E2A is located in Bangkok, the high city noise pretty much kills any SSB signals heading our way which is a real shame.

Overall, CQ WW DX Contest 2021 in SSB mode was incredibly fun and the improved propagation made it even more exciting for our “rookies” who only started their HF journey 1-2 years ago during the lowest time of the solar cycle. Even though we did not manage to beat the all-time score record for Thailand for Multi-Single HP category which belongs to HS0A in 1988, we will continue to improve our stations, hone our operating skills, and we will once again return to set a new record.