Friday night I got on at the start and conditions were pretty lousy. I decided to try Fldigi along with DM780 to help in decoding the incoming morse code. I ended up staying with DM780 since it seemed to do a little better job. I really would like Fldigi to work because it is better integrated with N1MM and would allow a bit more point/click like in a RTTY contest using MMTTY. I put in a little time before picking up one daughter from her friends house and ended with 36 Q’s on Friday. I needed to head to bed a bit early because we had our clubs spring hamfest the next morning and it starts early.
Saturday morning I woke up before 6, got ready and then zipped off to our clubs hamfest which is pretty popular in the area. As for me, no real ham radio purchases but I did pick up some Rescue Tape which seems pretty cool. I also grabbed some screw on caps for unused PL-239 connectors on my rig to keep them covered. I was at the hamfest until about 2pm when I got back on the radio and worked stations for a few hours. Conditions were still not good and when I called it quits on Sat evening I was at 150 Q’s.
Sunday morning I got back on the radio and it seemed conditions might have been a bit better but not too much. I ended up spending a bit more time hunting and pecking for contacts on 15m and 10m then just knocking out more 20m contacts. I had made some 10m contacts on Saturday but there was more 10m activity on Sunday. I worked 38 contacts on 10m which isn’t easy for me on my G5RV. I ended with 4 10m contacts to Brazil, 1 to Columbia, Martinique & Puerto Rico and 31 in the US. From NJ I had the most 10m contacts with FL at 12, 4 with TN, 3 with AL, 2 with CA & 1 with AR, GA, IL, MN, NJ, OK, SC, TX & WI. I already have some new states on 10m confirmed via LoTW since the contest ended. Any time I can hear a 10m station they can hear me so I must be stronger on TX then they are on RX.
We had a BBQ to go to Sunday afternoon so before 3pm (1900z) I finished things up and that was the end of the contest for me. I ended up with 255 total Q’s with the breakdown as follows:
Band QSOs Pts WPX 3.5 7 13 5 7 40 157 31 14 116 192 83 21 54 85 25 28 38 50 14 Total 255 497 158 Score : 78,526
73 & good DX,
K2DSL