Hi all,
Having had problems with my shack PC recently, I was a bit nervous of
playing in the contest, so I didn't say anything here beforehand.
However, it appeared to work OK, but froze overnight while I was sleeping.
That caused no harm, but did mean a re-boot before I could start up again.
Thinking I had the problem solved, I was quite happy, but about 30 minutes
before the end of the contest, just as I started to call Goetz DJ3IW, the
screen froze. Another re-boot, I thought, but the PC would not start up at
all.
Looks like this is down to a dirty video card, but the contest had long
since finished when I got it all back up and running.
OK, so it now looks as though I will have to strip the whole thing, clean it
all and then re-assemble it. Let's hope that cures it!
Anyway, conditions were a little strange at the start of the contest, with
me being able to work ON/PA etc, which is not normal on 20m.
Still, with the way the mults work in this contest, that wasn't a problem,
and I had some nice runs going.
Great to work Dick KS0M after so long, and also nice to work W7 and W6, plus
a few JA's.
15m opened sporadically, so I was careful about swapping bands unless I
could work some new mults.
20m appeared to close around 1700UTC here, with signals dying down to almost
nill. The only audible stations were already in the log, and 40m hadn't
really opened at that time. Time for tea then!
After having a nice Chinese take-away and clearing up afterwards, I went
back to the shack to find 40m quite lively. Trouble was that the RTTY
section was being squashed from both ends by those in the YO DX contest.
I did manage to work Mito JM1XCW on 40m, but noticed shortly afterwards that
some idiot was trying to tell him to "observe the bandplans and QSY" - all
sent in RTTY, over and over again! Sadly no callsign sent, but I guess that
was to be expected.
Went to 80m a bit later in the evening, and worked a few, but it was hard to
get heard. Most loud stations didn't appear to hear anything from me, but
some of the weaker stations were easy to log.
After spending about 30 minutes not being able to find anything new to work,
I decided to call it a night.
Started around 0700UTC after doing the re-boot, only to find that although
there were quite a few signals on 20m, all were already in the log. Tried
calling CQ, but only had a few callers, and it was hard to stay in the
chair.
Still, it was great to get back into the contests again, even with a few
minor problems.
My log is already loaded on to LoTW, but paper cards are always welcomed.
Here is my claimed score:
QSOs Points Years
80m: 12 24 12
40m: 44 90 32
20m: 197 444 56
15m: 26 57 26
10m: 0 0 0
Total: 279 615 126
Total multipliers: 126
Score: 77490
Earliest year: 1928 from RK9CWA
Latest year: 2009 from SN120OSP
Most common year: 1972
73 all
Phil GU0SUP
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