ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: PJ2T
Operator(s): W0CG/PJ2DX
Station: PJ2T
Class: SO Mixed Unlimited LP
QTH: Curacao
Operating Time (hrs): 22
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 642 80
SSB: 209 45
-------------------
Total: 851 125 Total Score = 373,250
Club: CCC
Comments:
Ten never fails to entertain and at the same time to disappoint. In October we
ran raging SSB pileups into Europe on 10 in CQWW. CQWW CW a month later was a
bit down but still good. But by December things fell apart. Friday night was
all of 63 hard-earned QSOs picking up PY, LU, and other assorted South America
contacts. There was zero Europe Saturday morning, and not until 1400Z did the
first stateside station appear, a weak NR4M. Surprisingly, by 1530Z signals
were S9+ and I had U.S. pileups on CW, quickly picking up most of the easy
mults. About an hour later that stopped as fast as it had started and the rest
of the afternoon was spent working hard for West Coast Qs and mults on both
modes.
I made a tactical error in not going after W1, W2 and W3 mults on SSB expecting
that they would be easy Sunday and ended up with no conditions to the Northeast,
missing all those mults except MD. The hoped-for Pacific openings never came
about except for a couple of super loud KH6s. After being a good guy and taking
Dorothy to dinner I returned to try to chase some South America mults, but gave
up in frustration at the terrible practices of some of the ops in the pileup on
an HC. Time for sleep.
Sunday morning’s MUF map showed an opening to the bottom left corner of
Europe and sure enough I was able to work about 20 CW Qs and grab some
unexpected mults. That opening only lasted about 45 minutes and then it was
back to slogging at low rates. At about 9:45 AM local time the commercial power
went down, so I hurriedly set up the generator and got going again on emergency
power in a rainstorm. There was a period of good rates and loud signals into
W4, so I switched to SSB to try to harvest those mults and had a great high
rate hour and managed to fill in all of the expected easy mult boxes. After
about five hours the power came back up but the hard rain that had plagued us
for several days continued. The rest of the contest was a test of patience in
that the band never really opened to the States after those two good W4 hours.
At around 2200Z I rode the greyline on SSB hoping for New England and was
rewarded with ME and NH. But imagine missing MA?! This was about the hardest I
have ever worked for 850 or so QSOs.
Huge thanks to my YL Dorothy who endured a weekend of being a contest widow
with nobody else here to talk to except the cats.
73, Geoff, W0CG/PJ2DX for PJ2T
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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