ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: W3EP
Operator(s): W3EP
Station: W3EP
Class: SO Mixed LP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 26
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 773 120
SSB: 732 130
-------------------
Total: 1505 250 Total Score = 1,139,000
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Conditions were generally good to Europe, but heard few African, Asian, or
Pacific stations. Maybe that was more a function of activity than propagation.
Worked a few JA on both CW and SSB late Sunday afternoon, but that opening did
not last long here. The only other Asian worked was 5B. Heard 4X once on CW,
buried among Europeans, but had little chance of getting his attention.
Caribbean and South American activity seemed low, but perhaps I did not look in
that direction often enough.
There was weak backscatter most of the contest, but sometimes stations could
not hear my low power signals, even when they had no other callers. Still,
worked 50 of the 51 US multipliers on SSB, filling in the close in states with
backscatter, missing only RI. Rhode Island, 20 miles away! Worked W1AW/3 (DC)
and N3DXX (DE) on SSB, thanks to their persistence. Also worked DE on CW, but
not DC.
Nice sporadic-E opening (or else amazingly persistent meteor scatter) Saturday
evening. The band died down by 7PM local time and I assumed that was it for the
day. I got some dinner and went down to turn off the rig around 8PM local time.
Much to my surprise, there was a small cluster of strong SSB stations, mostly
with W3 and W4 calls, making QSOs at a comfortable clip. Worked all that I
could and checked the CW band from time to time, but there was much less
activity there. The opening seemed to diminish after an hour. Still a nice
little run with half-a-dozen new multipliers at that point in the contest.
The band seemed slow to open to Europe on Saturday morning, with the paths
initially skewed southeast, as sometimes happens. Often hear weak LP stations
from SE Asia or Australia at those times, but if any were there that morning,
they were smothered by the Europeans. The band opened much more quickly to
Europe on Sunday morning on the direct path and signals may have been a bit
stronger. A few mostly G and EA stations continued to call well after local
noon, even when I turned the beam west to start working the much stronger US/VE
crowd.
Nice contest overall, though not my best Mix LP effort. This was probably the
first time in any ten-meter contest effort that I had more QSOs on Sunday than
Saturday, even though I was on more-or-less continuously both days. Expect to
see some big QSO totals but I would guess that multiplier tallies from the US,
at least, will not be extraordinary.
Emil W3EP (Connecticut)
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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