ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: DH8BQA
Operator(s): DH8BQA
Station: DH8BQA
Class: SO Mixed HP
QTH: JO73ce
Operating Time (hrs): 17.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 243 74
SSB: 124 36
-------------------
Total: 367 110 Total Score = 134,200
Club: Rhein Ruhr DX Association
Comments:
Elecraft K3, PA + 6 ele OWA Yagi @ 60 ft.
To sum it up: Sunspot minimum seems to be back! Conditions really sucked. :-(
Saturday started very slow. Band "opened" (if you can really call it "open") at
about 7:15 UTC from here in north-eastern Germany. Things went really slow, no
runs, not much to work. A number of QSOs just using Meteor Scatter. Sorrily not
everybody knows what it is so another number of QSOs were simply lost. Positive:
KH7Y was a nice 559 long path both mornings. But most stations rather weak with
lots of QSB. Worked JA5FBZ as the only JA in the morning on skewed path (80
degrees instead of 45 degrees). Later on he was a booming 599+20 on long path!
JH3PRR added to the JA long path fun but that was it on Saturday. Not much from
South America and just K1WHS and VE9HF on skewed path (250 degrees instead of
300 degrees) concerning continental North America. Band closed already at 13:50
UTC so after a few more ground wave and MS QSOs I decided to call it a day at
15:30 UTC.
Back to the station on Sunday morning. Band opened even an hour later just
after 8 UTC. VKs & ZLs louder on Sunday but still only very few UA9s, but no
UA0s, no JAs, not much concerning other DX. Long path to JA later on a bit
better, added 9 more JAs plus VR2XMT and BD7LMD to the log. Caribbean not
really open, the big guns like PJ2T beeing really weak and a struggle to work.
Again not much from South America nor North America (just K5EK on probably an
MS + F2 link for under a minute) and band closed at 13:30 UTC already so after
a few more ground wave and MS QSOs I switched off at 15:30 UTC.
Was doing some other computer stuff afterwards, sending in my log to the
contest robot, packing some of the equipment, listening to weather forecasts,
etc. Then before putting the K3 into storage again I decided to switch it on
once more to save my modified config (did some recalibrations during the
weekend). By coincidence I heard K4TD calling CQ on "my" last CQ frequency
before switching off! Worked him at 40 watts beaming South America. Thought it
was skewed path but then discovered he was booming in at 599 direct path!
Immediately switched the PA on again and worked a bunch of U.S. stations for a
nice number of new state multipliers during the following 20 minutes! Seems we
had a nice ES + F2 propagation link as at the same time GMs were quite loud and
they had direct propagation to the U.S. Afterwards there was another small ES
opening to EA with lots of them being loud now (until then I had just worked
one EA which is very unusual). That also enabled connection to the F2
propagation from Iberia to South America so I was able to work a lot of new
"fresh meat" into that direction, too. Band went dead again after 18 UTC so I
finally switched off everything, packed the equipment and cleared the car from
about 10 cm of new snow that fell during the day to go back into town.
That last 80 minutes of operating time alone made up for about 25% of my total
score! For the other 75% I needed some 16 hours. Really hard hard work from so
far North ... Anyway, propagation-wise it was again very interesting and it
seems the old saying stays true: There ain't no meters like ten meters. :-)
73, Olli - DH8BQA
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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