It was the CQ WW DX contest this weekend. It seemed like a good opportunity to test out my station and to work a few more DX counters. I was a very casual contest participant. Single operator, single band, assisted, part time participant at best. Meaning that I was only on for a few hours each evening and morning and I stuck to 40 meters, the only band I am QRV on.
My main operating session was Saturday night, but a freak snowstorm dumped 3 inches of slush and ice on the roof. My antenna SWR became very high and the amplifier tripped. I got out a ladder, a head torch and a steel ruler and scraped the ice off the antenna and the surrounding building surfaces. That fixed the SWR, but only for about 20 minutes. In frustration I put an attenuator in between the radio and the amplifier and clicked in attenuation until the amplifier stayed on line. 1-3dB seemed to work depending on where I was in the band. It made little difference on receive, but I could click it out to listed to a station if I wanted to.
I worked 16 of the 40 CQ zones. In Europe I ticked off the normal 14, 15, 16 and 20, working several new entities, including Kaliningrad (UA2), Estonia (ES), Moldavia (ER), Bulgaria (LZ) and others. I picked up zone 33 in Africa with another new one, Morocco (CN) and Zone 21 with Georgia (4L).
In North America I logged all of the zones except Zone 1 and Zone 6, although I heard a Mexican station on Sunday morning but could not get him in the log. South America was spotty at best and I only worked Zone 11. That was partly because I ignored stations in countries that I did not need.
More interestingly, I worked Zone 31 - Hawaii (KH6) and Zone 32 - New Zealand (ZL). They were satisfying because both were new countries. It also felt good because I got up just before 6am when I thought that I would start to get grey line propagation. In hindsight I should have got up earlier because I failed to get Japan and Australia before conditions faded, even though they were there. I was chatting to a Canadian station later in the evening and he worked both of them in the early hours.
It was a fun contest. I worked 15 new counters, bringing my "worked" total to 73 countries. My confirmed total is languishing at 36 though. But that is a different issue.
Enter Comments Here:
Copyright 2001-2021 Chris Thompson
Send me an email