ARRL DX Contest, CW - 2021
Call: W6PH
Operator(s): W6PH
Station: W6PH
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: Lone Pine CA
Operating Time (hrs): 36.8
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 19 10
80: 141 33
40: 493 57
20: 689 90
15: 129 41
10: 2 2
-------------------
Total: 1473 233 Total Score = 1,029,627
Club: Southern California Contest Club
Comments:
K3S Expert 1.3K-FA WinTest 4.11
Slopers for 160,80 40-2CD, 3L20, 5L15 on AB-577's at 60 feet A3S at 40 feet
After taking a year off because of my disgust with FT8 and digital contesting
and selling off my radios, I decided to get back into a contest. I repurchased
some radios. I am getting too old to crank up my AB-577 masts, so I got my 16
yr old neighbor kid to help me out. All the antennas were still working and the
rotators rotated. Then I found that the big knob on my K3S would stall
intermittently. I got through most of the weekend with it not stalling. But
when it did, I just clicked on cluster spots until it started working again.
Conditions were really pretty sorry. I didn't work any Europeans on 40m the
first night. They were weak and the east coast was a curtain for me. The
second night got better as there weren't that many East Coasters calling. I
cherry picked through the loudest signals which were really pretty weak.
I made a pretty bad tactical mistake on Saturday. I stayed on 20 meters because
it was really productive and I figured that 15m would be closed to Europe
because of the poor conditions. When I finally went there, it was the tail end
of the Euro opening and I missed quite a few easy mults. I figured I would fill
them in on Sunday. I made a quick look at 10 meters and got in on the last two
minutes of the opening. I never heard another signal again on 10 meters. Well,
Sunday turned out to be worse than Saturday and it was S&P all day. Even
the Asia opening toward the end of the contest was no where near as productive
as Friday and Saturday afternoons. But the JA's were a bottomless pit all night
on 80 and 40. JA's made up 53 per cent of my total contacts.
There were very few highlights. Working 9G5FI on 80 meters to make four bands
was pretty neat. While tuning on 20 meters around 9 am local, I ran across a
very loud 9M2ZAK calling CQ with no responses. This path shows up in good
propagation and it surprised me. I looked for more deep Asians but didn't find
any. One of the coolest contacts I heard was my friend K5MH working TK5MH.
Even though I find any decoding of radio signals with computers to be
distasteful, I put that behind me and really enjoyed the contest. This was my
first ARRL stateside since 1999. I went to VP9 for 21 consecutive years. Covid
put the kabash on it.
The antennas will be lowered this week until the fall contest period. We get
strong winds here on the high desert. No reason to tempt fate.
73, Kurt W6PH
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