As noted 2 days ago in Too many contests this weekend! SARTG NAQP NJQP + more! I was looking forward to sneaking in some ham radio contesting in between everything else. In the end, it mostly worked out like I thought it would. Friday night we had family over to celebrate recent birthdays including one of my daughters who turned 15 on Saturday. I got on near the end when folks started to leave and worked a bit of the SARTG contest Fri night. I think I ended up with about 70 contacts that evening. On Saturday I worked about 3 more hours of the 2nd SARTG section before heading off to the NY Giants pre-season game. I was hoping for a bit more 15m activity in the SARTG contest but it wasn’t happening for me. There were some contests a couple months back where 15m was hopping but that seems to have ended, at least for what I can hear.
Around 11pm local time (0300z) Saturday night I got home from the football game and started logging NAQP contacts. I spent 2 hours & 15 mins in the contest and ended the evening about 1:15am (0515z) with 76 contacts. Since it was already very late, I only logged a few strong west coast stations on 20m including Alaska. I heard KL7RA as the first station when I turned the radio on but he had a good amount of folks calling so I worked other stations before coming back to him on 20m. Its always nice to have a quick contact on SSB with some folks that are in all the RTTY & CW contests. It is a good feeling to hear them address you personally and even by name just from hearing your call sign. I ended the evening working KL7RA as my last contact on 40m. I then went to bed and slept late for me before waking up and getting on the air for the last 3 or so hours of the final SARTG section. I ended the contest with a total of 171 SARTG contacts.
The NJ QSO Party takes place over 2 days and had a portion on Saturday and a portion on Sunday. I wasn’t around on Saturday but after the SARTG contest on Sunday I listened and didn’t hear any NJ stations. I then went on 20m and started calling CQ NJQP but never had anyone answer. Seems I’m not the only one as W2LJ reported the same on his blog – NJ QSO Party – “Chirp, chirp, chirp”. We had some pretty heavy weather in Northern NJ on Sunday with passing thunderstorms and periods of real heavy rain. When I’m posting this, there’s still over 2 hours left in the NJQP if I wanted to get on and keep trying but I don’t think I will. K2DBK had let me know that I would probably be disappointed based on his past experience with the NJQP and he was unfortunately right on with his prediction.
Here’s my score summary from the 2010 NAQP SSB ham radio contest:
Band QSOs Pts Sec NA 3.5 34 34 20 0 7 32 32 21 0 14 10 10 6 0 Total 76 76 47 0 Score : 3,572
And here’s my score summary from the 2010 SARTG RTTY ham radio contest:
Band QSOs Pts Cty Sec 3.5 5 50 1 3 7 28 290 8 11 14 119 1430 30 12 21 9 100 6 2 Total 161 1870 45 28 Score : 136,510
Thanks to all for the contacts! 73,
K2DSL