ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: WQ5W
Operator(s): WQ5W
Station: WQ5W
Class: SO CW LP
QTH: Texas
Operating Time (hrs): 27.7
Summary:
Mode QSOs Mults
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CW: 1325 137
SSB:
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Total: 1325 137 = 727,744
Club: North Texas Contest Club
Comments:
Rig: TS-850S
Ant: TH-7 @ 55?
This one turned out a lot better than it looked on Friday. The weather
forecast on Friday predicted thunderstorms starting Saturday and lasting all
weekend. I don?t operate during thunderstorms, so I figured the contest would
be a washout (literally). Still, I decided to give it a shot.
I kept an eye on the weather radar all weekend. On Saturday we had
thunderstorms to the west and to the east, but all we got was a brief shower
late Saturday afternoon. I disconnected all the antennas Saturday night after
the band died. Good thing, since the skies opened up about an hour later and
we had heavy thunderstorms all night long. Fortunately, we had a break in the
rain when I woke up Sunday and I reconnected without losing any time. During
the middle of my Sunday EU run, the heavy rain returned, but with no thunder.
It did cause a lot of static, so I lost a lot of Q?s on signals I could have
copied easily on Saturday with no rain static. I did have to QRT Sunday
afternoon for about 30 minutes when a shower with thunder came through.
Since I thought I would have limited operating time, I made a concentrated
effort on S&Ping for mults. The strategy seemed to pay off as I ended up 3
more mults than last year. Even though I made 17 less Q?s I still ended up
with a raw score almost 7K higher than last year?s total.
Worked all 50 states and all VE provinces except for LAB, NWT and YT. Toughest
DX mult was XE2AC who stuck with me for about 3 minutes to pull me out of the
backscatter-thanks!
Worked more JA?s than I did last year, but didn?t hear much else from Asia
other than UA0?s. Also seemed like there were far fewer Caribbean/SA stations
on and Africa was almost nonexistent. Found it interesting that my biggest EU
QSO count came from OK-even more than DL!
Operated 27.7 hours, which is about 24 hours more than I thought I would get
going in. Conditions seemed as good as last year, maybe even a little better.
This is probably my favorite contest when conditions are good since even the
little guys get to experience steady good rate throughout the contest. We
ended up with about 4 inches of rain this weekend, which made it nice to have
something fun to do indoors. Thanks to all for the Q?s!
73,
Alan, WQ5W
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