More WAS completed

Contacts

I wasn’t even paying attention to the various WAS awards but I noticed this evening that I only needed 1 more 40m contact to have 40m WAS. The last state was Wyoming which was on one of the sked sites so I asked if we could make a 40m contact and WY7FD (Dwayne) said sure and I was able to log Wyoming on 40m to complete 40m WAS.

What I didn’t consider, which is very obvious, is if you complete the Triple Play Award, you also complete WAS CW, WAS Phone and WAS RTTY. I had WAS RTTY already completed last year and since I have all phone contacts for the TPA, I now have WAS Phone completed. After the next 5 CW contacts for the Triple Play, I’ll also have WAS CW.

I also need just 3 more states (mostly close ones) to complete 20m WAS so we’ll see if there’s a way to get that done too. Thanks to all the ops that have worked with me to make all these contacts!

73,
K2DSL

Saint Martin Confirmed and the Triple Play Award

Contacts

A QSL card came in today confirming the 3 contacts with FS5KA during the ARRL DX SSB contest in the beginning of March. This was my first QSL for a contact with St Martin so that ups my non-LoTW contacts to 18 for a total of 118 confirmed DXCCs.

For Triple Play Award (TPA) this past weekend I tried to get a bunch of contacts for states/modes that I needed. I did pretty well and late Sunday after our club meeting I was able to make a phone contact with AH6RR to log Hawaii for my last needed SSB phone contact. So as of now I have all states confirmed in RTTY and Phone and just 6 states remaining to get confirmed via CW. I looked real hard this weekend for a Montana station on CW since it was their QSO party, but I couldn’t find one. The hunt continues.

73,
K2DSL

100 DXCCs Confirmed on LoTW

Contacts

Yesterday, HH4/K4QD confirmed a CW contact on LoTW which is my 100th confirmed entity there. I have 17 additional confirmed via QSL cards for a total of 117. Woohoo!  Of those 100 confirmed on LoTW, 97 are on 20m. Maybe I’ll wait for 100 confirmed on 20m before applying for any DXCC award.

This past weekend I’ve been working on filling in some needed states/modes for the Triple Play award. I need 2 more confirmed via SSB phone (Hawaii and Mississippi) and the rest (less then 10 now) are on CW. So I’ll continue to see if I can fill in those final ones.

73,
K2DSL

Latest DXCC and the CQ WPX SSB recap

Contacts, Contests

It’s been a week and I haven’t posted my summary from the CQ WPX SSB contest last weekend.  I made contacts with 63 different DXCCs, 2 of which were new entities for me. The new entities were Haiti and Mozambique. I logged Q’s with 45 of the 50 states.  There was a nice 15m opening where I had a contact with Falkland Islands and South Africa which is 8,000 miles from me and my longest 15m contact to date.

80m on Friday evening of the contest was fine, but it was horrible on Saturday evening and for the end of the contest on Sunday. There were no US stations on 80m because of the noise/static so I probably missed lots of additional multipliers as well as some of the missing 5 states which are close by to me and 80m would be the preferred band to make a contact with them on. But all in all, a very good effort for me and I feel good about my showing.

        Band    QSOs    Pts  WPX
         3.5      69     153   44
           7     110     191   58
          14     211     417  146
          21      28      65   17
       Total     418     826  265

            Score : 218,890

Since my last posting, I’ve received a QSL card for a contact with PJ5NA in St Eustatius confirming my only contact so far with that DXCC entity.  I still stand at 99 confirmed on LoTW and with the new QSL card I have 17 other DXCCs confirmed for a total of 116 DXCCs confirmed.

73,
K2DSL

Some new DXCC confirmations

Contacts

In the past few days I received some LoTW confirmations for the United Nations contacts I made with 4U1UN. That brings my confirmed DXCC count on LoTW to 99.

Today in the mail, I received 5 new direct QSL card responses back. Two of them are the first QSLs for some unconfirmed DXCCs. The first is a card from 7Q7HB from Malawi, Africa.  I had a 20m RTTY contact back in the middle of February with Harry and I’m really glad to the this DXCC confirmed. The other new one is from EL2DX and the American Embassy at Monrovia, Liberia. Thank you James for the CW QSO and for sending the QSL card back so quickly.

With the quick turnaround of these 2 new confirmations, I stand at 99 via LoTW and16 more via paper QSL cards for a total of 115 confirmed DXCCs.

I also need to write up the post for this past weekends CQ WPX SSB contest. A lot of work, but a lot of fun!

73,
K2DSL

British Virgin Islands Confirmed & Nigeria Logged

Contacts

In today’s mail there were 3 QSL cards. One was a very nice card from VP2VVA which was operating from the British Virgin Islands, giving me a new confirmed DXCC. The contact was on 20m CW during the recent ARRL DX CW contest. It also happens to be my only contact from that entity so it is nice to get such a quick confirmation. That puts me at 98 confirmed DXCCs via LoTW and 14 additional via paper QSL cards for 112 confirmed DXCCs.

Yesterday I was also able to get in the log a 40m CW contact with 5N/LZ1QK in Nigeria. That’s my only contact so far with Ngeria so I wrote out a QSL card to send via the bureau.

73,
K2DSL

BARTG RTTY Recap

Contacts, Contests

This past weekend was the BARTG RTTY contest. I knew I couldn’t participate on Sunday due to some other obligations, but I wanted to make a lot of contacts while I was able to get on.

I was able to get on Friday night for a few hours, most of Saturday and then the final 2 hours on Sunday evening. I did a lot of S&P but I also felt comfortable going into run mode a few times. At least with this contest I was able to find decent frequencies to get that going.  If I could have gotten a couple more hours on 20m on Sunday I might have been able to get some more DX multiplers.   If nothing much changes from what is on 3830, I did pretty good in the SOAB LP division. We’ll have to see what the final results show.

        Band    QSOs    Pts   Cty  Sec   Cnt
         3.5      61      61    7   11    3
           7     128     128    9   16    0
          14     126     126   29   13    3
       Total     315     315   45   40    6

            Score : 160,650

Besides the BARTG, I made 5 SSB contacts in the ND QSO Party, 5 contacts (2 CW & 3 SSB) in the OK QSO Party, 6 SSB contacts in the VA QSO Party and 25 contacts (14 CW & 11 SSB) in the Russian DX.

73,
K2DSL

St Lucia now confirmed

Contacts

Today in the mail I received a QSL card direct from J69DS (Frans). This is a QSL for the only contact I’ve had with St Lucia in the Caribbean which occurred back in October on 40m RTTY, so it’s nice to have this new one confirmed. Current DXC count is 98 via LoTW and 13 additional via QSL cards for a total of 111 confirmed DXCCs.  I still have 29 DXCCs logged but not yet confirmed via LoTW or printed QSL cards.

73,

K2DSL

Trinidad now confirmed

Contacts

Thanks to 9Z4AM (Anthony) I received a postal QSL card direct, allowing me to now mark Trinidad and Tobago confirmed. That gives me 98 via LoTW and 12 additional confirmations via paper QSL cards.

A weekend of many contests

Contests

This weekend there are 5 contests I’ve made a contact in. The primary one I’m participating in is the BARTG RTTY contest. It goes from my Fri night thru Sun night. I’ve made 265 Q’s in that contest so far but I’m not sure I’ll be able to operate at all today because of other commitments.

I also made contacts in the ND and OK QSO parties which already ended. The Russian DX party ended this morning and I made a few Q’s in that one. The VA QSO party runs through tonight.

I use N1MM for logging and it is unfortunately a real pain to switch contests quickly. At least it is for me and I might not know some trick to make it quicker/easier or not necessary at all. I’ll have to investigate that. This weekend was particularly rough because all the contests were active at the same time and all but the RTTY contest were pretty intermixed both in CW and SSB so you never knew which contest they were in until you were on their frequency.

73,
K2DSL