Contest: ARRL DX CW
Call: N5LT
Category: 15m Single Band
310 X 68 = 61608
As everyone who operated the contest realizes 15m was not very good.
However, doing a 15m single band served several purposes for me: 1) I was
able to leave my guest-op site and make the hour drive home to spend
Valentines evening with my wife. (Unfortunately, I had to get up at 5:30am
local to drive back). 2) I was able to practice the CW thing again, though
not as much practice as I would have liked. 3) I had fun.
Yep, fun even though I worked just 310 stations during my +/- 22 hours on
the air. I was on the entire time that the band was "open" down here.
My best rate was a 31 hour during the 16z hour on Sunday. I also had hours
of 21 and 20. So, if those were my fastest 3 hours of the contest I'm sure
you get the picture of what the other 19 were like.
I worked 126 EU stations, followed by 60 SA and 55 JA's. Most EU was worked
Sunday with the SA spread pretty evenly and the JA's a little better on
Saturday. Of the EU stations over 20 were OH's. I had a nice little
opening to northern Europe Sunday afternoon.
I worked some decent dx for the conditions with 5X, 9L, TU, TL and H44 all
calling in. I must have found the S92 before the packet crowd as his
frequency was nice and clear. Not so as I tuned the band later.
I was also called by a 9X4 but lost the q as I couldn't get his power. I
was asking for a repeat but a K1 station fired up on the freq and by the
time he left the 9X was gone. I also had a lot of problems with QSB on
Sunday. I had to ask for alot of repeats as stations just faded into the mist.
Although the condx were nothing like the CQWW CW, where I was also 15m
single band, I had fun. This CW stuff is contagious and I find myself
looking more forward to code contests than ssb ones. I need to get more
practice, but the only time I can get on the air is for contests.
The cw contests seem easier as I am more relaxed, less on the edge of my
seat. I think this may be largely due to the fact that I've only done cw dx
contests and I'm less concerned about winning and more about learning how to
operate.
Congrats to the winners and to everyone else who managed to have fun in
spite of the highband conditions.
73, Russ--
N5LT
ex. N5KA, AA5RB, N5DDO
russ@inetport.com
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