This past weekend was a big ARRL CW contest. In this contest US stations make contacts with non-US stations and non-US stations work US stations. No US to US contacts except with Hawaii and Alaska. US stations send their State and non-US stations sent how much power they are running.
Friday night after getting home from work and having something to eat I got on the air. It seemed unusual with the first 2 contacts being Asiatic Russia and the stations coming in so strong. They were running 10x plus the power I was running but they didn’t have any issue copying my 100w. Over the next couple of hours I worked more Asiatic Russia stations, Hawaii stations and Japan stations. At 9:30pm ET (0230z) I worked 5 Japan and 2 Hawaii stations in 15 mins. Worked a few statioins on 40 m and called it a night with only 29 stations in the log.
Woke up Saturday morning not feeling well so I didn’t spend a lot of time at the radio. I took frequent breaks throughout the day. But conditions were good and there was a lot of activity whenever I was on. Started out on 40m working Caribbean stations and European stations and even another Japan station and Hawaii station. Switched to 20m for a while, than 15m and 10m. Hit all 3 bands whenever I got on. Early Saturday evening I heard DP1POL in Antarctica again and worked them on 20m. I had previously worked that station as well as a couple others in Antarctica. DP1POL was already confirmed on LoTW on Monday morning. Sat evening I worked TI5W on 80m for the first station in the contest worked on all 5 bands I could tune up. Even though I wasn’t feeling well I stopped with 296 Qs when I shut things down on Saturday night.
Sunday morning conditions seemed to be similar to Saturday and pileups on some stations had become more manageable. I was able to tune the bands and pick off stations at a pretty good clip. I even found A45XR in Oman without any pileup and worked him on the first call for a new DXCC entity. Like DP1POL, A45XR uses LoTW and my new one was already confirmed by Monday morning. I also found 4U1ITU in Geneva without any pileup and worked them quickly. I had previously QSLed via the bureau for 4U1ITU but didn’t have anything back yet, so I’m sending a QSL direct to get this one confirmed for another new one. I also worked EA9EU in Ceuta. I don’t have that DXCC confirmed yet though I’ve worked that station before and a few others without any luck getting a QSL. Might need to go the direct route on that one too.
I shut things down before the end of the contest so I could head over to my clubs monthly meeting. I finished up with 530 contacts encompassing 90 different DXCCs worked in one weekend with 100w and wire antennas. I worked 5 stations on 5 different bands and another 18 stations on 4 different bands. Germany, Hungary and England were the entities with the most stations worked over the weekend. I made 11 contacts each with Japan and Hawaii and 8 contacts with Alaska and 6 contacts with Asiatic Russian stations.
Here’s a map of the stations contacted created with http://levinecentral.com/adif2map/ (click to enlarge):
Here’s a score summary from N1MM:
Band QSOs Pts Cty
3.5 23 69 20
7 59 177 41
14 222 666 77
21 177 531 74
28 49 147 27
Total 530 1590 239
Score : 380,010See you in the next contest which will be the NAQP RTTY contest this weekend.
73,
K2DSL