[3830] ARRL 10 OH6QU SO CW HP

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                    ARRL 10-Meter Contest

Call: OH6QU
Operator(s): OH6QU
Station: OH6QU

Class: SO CW HP
QTH: Vaasa
Operating Time (hrs): 4

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  65     23
  SSB:           
-------------------
Total:  65     23  Total Score = 5,980

Club: Contest Club Finland

Comments:

Originally I had no intention to join this contest as it is the bottom of the
sun activity cycle which normally means absolutely no conditions at all on 10M
at high latitudes. However I noticed some signals on 10M on Sunday morning and
decided to give out some points. Well, that took next three hours:-)

Frankly speaking I was surpriced how many QSOs you were able to make on 10M
with marginal band conditions. However the only DX worked in the contest was
V5/DL5XL.

I knew from the experience that certain type of geomagnetic disturbance seems
to open the polar path from Northern Europe to USA & Canada on 15M and 10M. So
I hoped that this would happen tonite and turned my antennas towards USA on
Sunday evening local time. At 1815 UTC Sodankylä magnetogram jumped suddenly
and soon after that KZ5D was just above the noise level here! I kept calling
him about 10 minutes but he was too busy with local USA pile-up to get thru it.
I started to browse band to see if I can hear any others from USA. Unfortunately
no other stations heard and I returned to call KZ5D but then conditions went
away at 1830 UTC.

At 1930 UTC I found next US station on the band. It was very weak and it took
me sometime to figure out his callsign. It was NX5M. He was most of time not
readable and therefore I wasn't calling him until his signal got better around
1945 UTC. I think he was hearing me because I got many times question marks
back but then conditions went away again and I wasn't able to read him anymore.
I had to give up. What a shame... He disappeared to noise at 1950 UTC.

No USA worked in this contest but I gained a little bit more understanding of
polar path propagation. Perhaps that pays off in the future when trying to
figure out possible openings over the North Pole. Anyway a positive experience
in these conditions.


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