This past weekend was the very popular CQ Worldwide CW contest. As I’m still getting up to speed on morse code, I use DM780 to help decode the incoming morse code not unlike a RTTY signal. It works extremely well and allows me to participate.
I got a bit of a late start on Friday after attending a local ham radio auction. I made 33 contacts in just under 2 hours on 40m and some local 80m contacts to add as multipliers.
On Saturday I got up and started on 20m working mostly Europe. After a couple hours I checked 15m and worked some Europe and Caribbean / South American stations. I’m weak on 15m with my G5RV but in most cases if I can hear a station, they can hear me. I even checked 10m and made a contact with HI3A in the Dominican Republic and NQ4I in Georgia. I also worked V5VQ on 10m with the other couple being US stations for multipliers. The rest of Saturday was spent on 20m and 15m until I left at 2100z (4pm ET) to a party for a few hours. When I got back home I got on the air for 1 hour on 40m making contact with European and Caribbean/South America stations.
Sunday morning when I turned the radio on I was still on 40m from the night before and the station on the frequency was a Hawaii station that I was able to make contact with. 1 Mhz away was VK6AA in Australia booming in on 40m and was able to make a contact on just the first or second call. After a couple more 40m contacts I switched to 20m and then 15m throughout the day before hitting 40m & 80m at the end of the contest.
New DXCCs logged in the 2 days leading up to the event were with Faroe Island, Botswanna and Somoa. During CQ WW I logged contacts with 3 additional new DXCCs in Madagascar, Guernsey and Zambia.
I logged 25 CQ zones with all but 1 on 20m which was the Australian station logged on just 40m. I wasn’t able to copy any Asian stations such as those in Japan, etc. Zone 5 I worked on 5 bands of 10m-80m and zones 14 & 33 I worked on 4 bands of 15m-80m. I had the most Q’s to zones 15 & 14 followed by zones 8 & 5.
I worked a total of 86 DXCC’s with 5 on 80m, 44 on 40m, 71 on 20m, 39 on 15m and 3 on 10m. The 366 contacts were made with 286 distinct stations., 18 of which I worked on 3 bands. Canada had the most Q’s followed by Germany and Spain. I logged 13 US contacts all for multipliers as US stations provide no points to me.
I am truly amazed at the ability for operators to decode morse code at the speed it is sent as well as the multiple signals (seems like a hundred at a time) coming at them and even the weak signals. It’s really fascinating that they can do it is so well.
Here’s my score summary:
Band QSOs Pts Cty ZN
3.5 10 21 5 4
7 79 203 45 16
14 210 589 72 24
21 62 159 39 15
28 5 4 3 3
Total 366 976 164 62
Score : 220,576Log has been sent in as well as uploaded to LoTW, eQSL, HRDLog.net and Clublog.org. The QSLs are already coming in on eQSL and LoTW. Now to fill out the paper QSLs!
73,
K2DSL
Great job! My results were very similar to yours, though I was active more in the evenings (not much at all in the morning) and as a result, I’ve got more on 40m. It’s interesting to compare because we have similar working conditions (100w to G5RV and are in the same general area). According to my logger, I was on for around 16 hours (though given that I’ll sometimes make a contact, do something else for a while, but not 30 minutes, which constitutes “official” off-time, that’s probably a little overstated). Given our similar scores, I’m curious as to how long you operated for?
Here’s my summary:
Band QSOs Pts Cty ZN 3.5 17 36 11 6 7 145 401 66 20 14 119 301 51 21 21 47 120 33 16 28 5 7 4 4 Total 333 865 165 67Dave, thanks for posting. I heard you during the contest two or three times over the weekend. I saw your score posted to 3830 before I saw the comment on my blog and noticed we were very close again in number of contacts.
Looks like I worked 2 hours on Fri night, 8.5 hours on Saturday and 10 hours Sunday, like you using 30 mins as the time to determine if I wasn’t on the air. That comes to 20.5 hours for me using very rudimentary calculations.
Another BARA club member K2ZC had a good score with 466 Q’a of which 184 were on 40m though you had more zone’s in less Q’s.
Fun contest and thanks for the post Dave!
Congratulations on your fine effort and excellent score!
Working VK6AA on 40m from the east coast on the second call speaks to operator and station engineering with a little help from low band propagation. Low band work really wrecks my sleeping schedule however logging those multipliers makes a difference later in the event.
I did learn understanding seasonal propagation would help my sleeping schedule. I woke early Saturday morning and missed important multipliers on 80m, instead, I needed to stay up late on Friday night.
I’m enjoying your content and keep up the great work! Best RadioSport results from the shackadelic on the beach.
73
KA3DRR