I did not expect good things to happen in the contest at solar maximum.
I went forward with a single goal to work into EU of which I succeed.
Conditions were fair to good on first evening. I worked Wales, Norway
and Portugal which made me very happy. G3YRO had decent signal an hour
before his sunrise but could not hear my calls. There were others but
the opening was short and eastern stations ruled the frequency.
Only a few stateside multi-multi guys hung in for the duration. Out west
with low activity and superb HF conditions did not help. N6RO and K0RF
only had one or two more multipliers in hours of CQing than I did
basically operating a little the first night. AA7A was exception due to
geographical sweet spot located on the New Mexico, Arizona and Mexican
border. Single ops or multi singles from the Caribbean spent only
minutes overall on the band leaving a big gap in achievable multipliers.
Saturday morning there was small turnout of JA and HL stations, KH6 and
AA7JV/MM....
The best way to describe Saturday evening and Sunday morning would be
"nothing and more of it" There was absolutely nothing there to work or
even hear other than drum beat of a few NA stations.
To sum it all up. Conditions were mostly poor to terrible but I'll be
back again next year to do it again.
73
Bob W7RH
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