The last NAQP was a semi-serious effort, this time it was a serious
one...but conditions were so poor that the semi-serious score beat the
serious one. 10 and 15 yielded only a few contacts in spite of checking
those bands often and sitting there CQing for quite awhile. Fortunately
20 was a gold mine of activity for running but, of course, the trade off
was limiting the number of multipliers the longer I stayed on 20.
160 was a joke, 80 was OK propagation wise but there did not seem to be
a lot of contest participants on the band. What was there was really
spread out over a broad range of frequencies. The foul mouthed slop
slingers this time thought they owned 3835 to 3855 and made things
difficult for any of us who dared to call CQ Contest in that "window"
(more like a big barn door than window).
Propagation on 40 was very good with only minimal static crashes. I had
thrown together a 3 element wire beam at 70 feet in some trees, fixed
due east just for this contest. It played extremely well. Hope to make
it permanent by Fall. Even some qrp stations in the deep south and
southern eastern seaboard were S-9. Like K6LL and others have said at
least from this QTH the high bands were key. Unfortunately, unlike
Dave, Dan and others I didn't have much luck moving mults from one high
band to another. Looking forward to the next one!
Jerry
K6BZ
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