ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: VE4GV
Operator(s): VE4GV
Station: VE4GV
Class: SO Mixed LP
QTH: MB
Operating Time (hrs): 19
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 688 98
SSB: 1250 103
-------------------
Total: 1938 201 Total Score = 1,055,652
Club: Radiosport Manitoba
Comments:
Things had been positively balmy in Winnipeg last week (far above zero F for
December? !! Unheard of). So the obligatory pre contest VE4 naked Tower Dance
ritual was made friendlier by cooperative temps. "Shrinkage" was
minimized!
Propagation forecasts had looked somewhat promising (we are acutely sensitive
to by K index, being close to 50 deg N lat. up here. I watched with some dismay
as the period leading up to showed possibility for a M Class flare Wed and Thurs
the K index climbed to 4 and higher and it didn't look good. I passed up a trip
to VE6SV's killer contest station because station owner Gord said that his
more northern latitude QTH propagation would severely suffer with those kinds
of numbers.
The ARRL 10 M contest from VE4 is one of the highlights of our year. There
aren't many VE4 contesters and we are a relatively valuable commodity in ARRL
tests. It also is an opportunity for the LP contester to see how well you can
do on a band where you can make lots of Qs without running huge power or
stacked arrays. In essence, its the one contest of the year where huge station
hardware, antenna switching and power don't make that much of a difference.
Add to that the ability to spread out over almost 700 khz, even more with a
multi-mode entry and you have a contest that offers something for everyone when
condx are decent....especially the modest station owner. For those that like
single mode, you can pick your fav. Occasionally rare DX pop up and over the
period of 48 hours on 10 m you have a chance to work em without fighting the
mega stations. It also allows me to have long periods of sleep without the
"guilts", something rare in 48 hr contests!! The big factor is - is
old sol going to cooperate?
Unfortunately high than normal A and K index made for tough sledding especially
toward Europe. The northern European opening never did materialize and for this
reason the European multipliers never became a factor, much to the detriment of
the score. In fact it was difficult to work virtually anything from Northern
Europe at all. Another thing I noticed was a skewed E. path of the signals
which favored a 90° path from this location. After an hour or so we basically
lost propagation to Europe and the American run was on. Conditions seem pretty
good southward and on occasion the rate meter hit close to 300 contacts per
hour for short periods of time on phone.
As the late afternoon conditions moved westward and we had the occasional Asian
multiplier show up but other than that it was mostly US runs with an occasional
south American station. Several south American multipliers such as ZP, 8R, PZ
in Central America multipliers were also missing. Caribbean activity also seem
to be down somewhat. I'm surprised more XE provinces aren't on. There's a lot of
them available as mults!
Although I was aiming for the 2000 mixed mode QSO mark, I came in slightly
short. My score was slightly less than last year because this year I entered
in the unassisted class.
We can only hope that conditions remain similar for next year but we're on the
downward slope of the solar cycle and I suppose this may be the last hurrah for
many years to come.
After almost a 10 year hiatus from serious contesting for me (except for the
occasional 10 M test and SS) its nice to have encouragement and consistent
activity from our local contest group - Radiosport Manitoba.......... VE4s
VT(EAR), EA, YU, DRK, DXR and others.
Thanks to all for the Q's. Now that I've actually got something up for 160
(and a receive loop to help with the city noise) I'm looking forward to trying
the other end of the HF contest spectrum.
73 Rob VE4GV
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