This past weekend was the ARRL Sweepstakes Phone Contest. I couldn’t dedicate a large portion of the weekend to the contest with obligations on Saturday and the Giants football game from 10am-6pm on Sunday. So during the time I could get on the radio, I had a lot of fun.

Band   QSOs  Pts   Sec
3.5    103   206   29
7       62   124   19
14      40    80   19
Total: 205   410   67

Score : 27,470

I had 2 phone contacts with Alaska and I logged contacts with 47 of the 50 states, just missing Kentucky, South Carolina and Oklahoma.  As the stats above show, I logged a contact with 67 of the 80 sections. One frustrating missing section was Southern NJ. A whopping 50 miles or so south of me I couldn’t make a contact on 20, 40 or 80 meters.  if I was around when 20m was open to the West Coast I probably could have gotten some of the missing sections in the US and in Canada.

What was nice, even though I’ve only just started contesting, is there were a couple of operators that recognized my call and said hello when we were making the exchange.  Comments like “Nice to speak with you on phone, hope to see you in the next RTTY contest.”.

I’m going to take the Extra Class test on Friday. Would have been nice to have been an Extra during the contest so I could have slipped down into the Extra portion of the bands for additional sections (multipliers) and QSOs.  But a lot of fun for a phone contest. I found it a bit more enjoyable and relaxing then one where your contacts are all international.

73,
K2DSL