ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: K5NA
Operator(s): K5NA
Station: K5NA
Class: SO CW HP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 33
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 1394 104
SSB:
-------------------
Total: 1394 104 Total Score = 579,904
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
Conditions for the 2010 ARRL 10M Contest were the best that I remember for about
the past 5 or 6 years.
The contest started with a bang on Friday night and I was making QSOs until
about 0630Z. I donâ??t recall ever being up that late before.
On Saturday morning I ran into a serious problem. The rotator on the 10M tower
stopped working. It was a cool and humid morning and the sensing line from the
rotator opened up. To compound the problem, the rotator would move about 20
degrees before realizing that it was not getting the sensing pulses and it
would stop. After several tries to move, the antenna would be grossly
misaligned and I would have to get up and go outside in the cold to see which
way the antenna was pointed.
As we got into the morning the problem became intermittent and finally by
Saturday midmorning, the rotator started working again. Then I had to run to
the file cabinet to review the manual to determine how to realign the rotator.
>From Saturday afternoon until the end of the contest the rotator didnâ??t act
up again. Thank goodness!
The rest of the day Saturday was steady but slow as QSOs kept coming. When I
would work a new state, it would always be followed by other QSOs from the same
area. You could envision the ion cloud moving as the skip would change.
Sunday was also slow until the band opened wide again in the last 3 hours. All
and all, the beginning of the contest and the end of the contest were the best
for QSO rates. Like a big 10M QSO sandwich.
I was hoping that we would get a European opening but it didnâ??t happen. I
only worked two European stations, a G3 and a F6. They each answered my CQ. I
heard three multipliers that I didnâ??t work. VE5MX shared my CQ frequency for
a while before QSYing without working me. I heard P43JB calling people but he
never found me to call. And finally, a JA7 answered my CQ on Sunday afternoon
but disappeared before I could copy his number.
I missed NH, VT, and RI in the USA plus missed VO2, VE5, VE8, VY1, and VY0 in
Canada. I worked 15 of the 32 Mexican states. I think that is a good turnout
for this first 10M contest to use the XE states as multipliers. I hope that
some day I will work all of them in a single contest.
Congratulations to K1TO for a FB score. Dan and I have gone head-to-head in
this contest for a number of years. But I realize that my best finishes are
only with low sun spots and as conditions improve my advantage will go away.
I had a good book ready to read for this contest while pushing the CQ button,
but only got about half of it read. The QSO rates kept me busy.
This contest is always a lot of fun to do. And it is quite a contrast to the
previous noisy weekend on 160M.
73, Richard â?" K5NA
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