Hi all,
I had a plan.
Yup, I had a plan on how I was going to approach CQWW, and what my goal was
to be.
Until the weekend, solar conditions had been OK, but not great, so I set a
goal of 500Q's and 500k points.
I was extremely tired after a busy week, and plans of resting on Friday
afternoon were scuppered with various jobs that I had to do before locking
myself away for most of the weekend.
After a good sleep, I was in the shack early-ish (for me, on a Saturday
morning!) and I decided to start on 80m and catch a few W's, plus the EU
mults.
Bad idea! 80m was completely quiet, not one RTTY signal anywhere. Strange.
Checked 40m, and found loads of W's, and even heard UT, WA, MT and WY, but
those were all S&P, so I missed a few.
After that bands started to close, I went straight to 10m to find it was
crowded, and not with Es. It was properly open, with real DX around! JA, 9M2
etc, all loud, and easy to work.
After that, I tried 15m, and found some really nice DX around.
Things were looking up, but then something strange happened. I was on 10m,
and just managed to complete with a station while I watched his signal just
fade to nothing.
The bandscope showed that all signals were fading. Checked 15m, same thing.
Checked 20m, same thing. Even 40m was dead.
Hmmmm. Started to worry then, and went out to check the antennas, followed
by the various connections from the PC to the rig, the ATU and anything else
I could think of.
After about 30 minutes, things picked up again, so I made the most of it.
Then, around lunchtime, the same thing happened. As I was hungry, I had a
short break, some food, and got yet another mug of coffee. There were a few
signals around, but it was deathly quiet on most bands.
Oh well, a shopping trip with the XYL didn't seem to be a bad idea, so we
went and did the weekly shop.
When we got back, the bands had opened again, so all was well.
I now see it was a couple of solar flares that put paid to the bands.
Sunday was much better, and I spent a lot of time CQ'ing, and had some great
runs on 20 and 15, but 10 was hard work at times.
I also had the usual suspects call me, and then sit right alongside and call
CQ, pretty much blotting me out.
By around 0900 on Sunday morning, I knew that my goal of 500 Q's and 500k
points was way short of what was possible, so I just kept going until around
2100UTC, as I needed to get to bed and be ready for work today.
I was very pleased to bag a few new band slots, namely 6Y6U on 40m and 10m,
plus HI3TEJ and KG6DX on 10m. The other bonus was Zone 23 on 10m from
UA0YAY.
Gripes: Too many folk not exchanging callsigns at all during an exchange,
and more than a few that seem to think it is OK to call over an exchange in
a bid to get themselves heard.
I had am SV call me while I was in S&P mode, causing several repeats, and he
followed me down the band for 6 QSO's, each time calling me over and over.
Later, when I was CQ'ing, he came along and called me. OK, but he didn't
respond, so I sent NO COPY, QRZ? I worked someone else, and he called me
during the exchange once more. When I finally got him to respond, all I got
was a complete QSO, name, QTH, rig, antenna, power, WW Locator, club numbers
and so on. Amazing, but not once did he give me a CQ zone, so I didn't log
him for the contest.
Here is what I managed, despite that bit of fun............
Band QSOs Pts State/Prov DX Zones
---------------------------------------------------
80: 20 46 3 15 4
40: 111 256 14 49 15
20: 259 581 20 52 13
15: 222 563 36 60 22
10: 201 531 37 46 22
--------------------------------------------------
Total: 813 1977 110 222 76
Total (CLAIMED) Score = 806,616
SO AB LP, un-assisted, all with 100 watts (well, around 95 according to the
meter).
Many thanks to all for the fun, it was great to see the bands in such good
shape. Let's hope they stay this way!
My log is now on LoTW.
73 all
Phil GU0SUP
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