This weekend I participated in 3 different contests with most of the effort in the NAQP RTTY.
Before the NAQP fired up the DMC RTTY contest started. It starts before the NAQP, runs during the NAQP, and continues after the NAQP ends. I worked just 36 stations on 15m & 20m. Conditions didn’t seem good for me, but it killed some time.
Here’s a map of the contacts (click to enlarge):
Here’s the N1MM score summary:
Band QSOs Pts DXCC Area Cont 14 20 20 10 0 0 21 16 16 9 3 4 Total 36 36 19 3 4 Score : 3,168
At 2pm local time, the NAQP fired up. It was confusing at the start since there were stations working the DMC RTTY contest that was going on and stations now working the NAQP contest that just started. It didn’t take long but it seemed to me that most of the DMC stations took a break for a while or moved to other bands less used by the NA stations. I turned the hexbeam to the west since I’m mostly working stations to the west of NJ and I heard S5 noise on 15m and 20m. I switched to the G5RV and I heard the same noise. If I point the beam to the south, the noise goes completely away. I dealt with it throughout most of the contest but it definitely impacted my ability to hear stations. A local ham was working stations I couldn’t even hear or see in the waterfall. You can tell from the low count in the 15m totals how challenging it was.
10m was quiet for both noise and unfortunately RTTY signals. I switched to 10m a few times but there wasn’t any activity. Late in the afternoon I switched to 40m and there were a few stations active. After working them I parked myself on an open frequency, called CQ and worked a bunch of stations. I switched back to the higher bands and the noise had disappeared so I worked some stations I probably couldn’t hear with the noise. As the sun started to get low in the sky I was back on 40m where there was a lot of activity both in S&P and CQing.
As things were rolling along on nicely on 40m when my wife told me it was time to head out to a friend’s party. A couple hours later we got home and I got back on 40m and 80m to make some contacts before calling it a night and heading to bed. I missed logged 7 states with most of those in the immediate area since I wasn’t on 80m until the very end.
Here’s the summary of contacts by band for the NAQP contest:
Band QSOs Pts Sec 3.5 26 26 16 7 119 119 41 14 118 118 38 21 24 24 13 28 3 3 3 Total 290 290 111 Score : 32,190
On Sunday I decided to clean up things for outstanding QSL cards I needed to send, most in reply to those that sent them to me asking for a QSL in return. While I was doing that I had the radio on, flipped to 6m, and heard one of my club members a town away calling CQ. I realized it was the CQ WW VHF contest so I fired up N1MM, worked him and then on and off worked a station here or there. The stations ended up being local such as NJ, NY or CT and then FL with a lone LA (Louisiana) station.
I worked 12 stations in 9 different grids. I did end up getting everything done I needed with QSL cards. I’ll write about that next.
All scores sent in and also uploaded to LoTW, eQSL and ClubLog.
73,
K2DSL