Hi all,
This was my first contest with the new (to me) IC756Pro, and oh boy! What a
radio to use! The almost infinitely variable filtering is a joy, and makes
life so much easier.
This was a good contest for me, in that I managed 6 new band-countries, plus
an all time new one in 9J2KC, and working VK9CD was a real bonus for me.
I had chores to do on Satruday, so I decided not to play until after lunch,
although I did sneak in an hour or so before then, much to the chagrin of
the XYL!
Conditions seemed quite good, although 10m was only open (e)sporadically, so
it was a case of grab 'em while you can and move on.
15m was good to the US, but 20 was open to the far east. Ah well, can't have
it all. Mike KH7X had an excellent signal here, and was a nice mult for me.
I spent too long watching VK9CD build up in strength, but I didn't mind
really, as they went in to the log. Credit to them for actually giving time
to the contest!
Sunday was plain hard work. Even some of the US 'big guns' were weak with
me, and some needed several calls before I got them.
Nothing new really, so it was just a case of putting calls in the log.
Somehow, each time I found a clear frequency to call on, I ended up being
blasted out with PacTor, MFSK, tuners, PSK, and even QSY QSY in CW on
7035.4. A few times, one of the kW brigade worked me, and then sat 200Hz
away and called CQ, which is a pain for me.
Had one guy send a report straight off, and after I sent him my exchange,
that was it! Nothing back from him, so he ain't in my log. Another seemed to
be telling almost all that called him SRI QSO B4, which he also sent to me,
so I didn't work him either.
Did anyone else notice some exchanges were not what one was expecting? For
example, ZL2AMI seems to have aged 4 years since the last JARTS, YF0ANA was
giving out 40 at first, then changed to 00. One US station sent me
599-05-05, and only realised his mistake when I asked for his age.
There were so many signals so far off my frequency that I actually did a
check to see if I had some sort of shift set! Up to 450 Hz away is a little
too far!
Having the ability to use extremely narrow filters meant that a few were way
out of my hearing, and I am sure a few got away.
Still, depsite all that, it was kind of fun, despite the big flare, and it
was good to see quite a few new calls in there.
73 all
de Phil GU0SUP
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