Friday evening through Saturday evening was the 24 hour RAC Winter ham radio contest. I was on the air Friday night before heading to bed and a good portion of Saturday as I was waiting around for a blizzard which showed up later then expected and not as bad as they expected either. This was also the same time the OK RTTY contest was going on but I decided to do this one.

I operated both phone and CW and had a real good time. This is a bit of a slower paced contest and being just before the holidays, most of the operators took a moment out to wish each other happy holidays, merry Christmas and happy new year, making for a very enjoyable exchange.  There was also a Croatia CW contest going on at the same time with both contests using serial numbers, so there were a few DX contacts I’m guessing were in the other contest but I worked a small number of them anyway.

Last years RAC contest was a couple days after Christmas and this years was the weekend before. I think it had more participation this year. Last year I made 88 contacts all on phone and this year I made a total of 247 contacts split evenly with 123 on CW and 124 on Phone. The contest is fun because anyone can work anyone, but the points are higher for working Canadian stations and even higher for Canadian RAC stations. I tried to work anyone I could hear be they US, Canadian or DX stations.

I really enjoy the friendliness of this contest and hope to continue to participate in it in the future. Maybe it can be staggered with some other contests such as the OK RTTY one since both are a single 24 hour contest. All logs have been uploaded to the various log sites and a few paper QSL cards were written out to send via the bureau to the Canadian Cold War Museum station, the Ontario Science Center and the Vancouver Olympics  Amateur Radio Group.

Log summary:

Band   Mode  QSOs     Pts  Sec
 3.5   CW      29     154    5
 3.5   LSB     47     416    8
 7     CW      44     252    7
 7     LSB     27     212    8
 14    CW      44     210    5
 14    USB     40     286    7
 21    CW       6      46    2
 21    USB     10     102    3
Total  Both   247    1678   45

Score : 75,510

73 and happy holidays!
K2DSL