Topband: The Russian 160M contest

[Doug Turnbull]

Dear OMs and Yls,

 

       Last night I came back from dinner at our local with the XYL.   I sat
down at the radio and heard F5IN at about 21:06 UTC working a contest.   Ah
it is the Russian 160M contest -hmm.   Oh it seems that one does not just
work UA land.   This is good as there would not be enough activity to keep
going.   It would just be a bore.    Okay another good thing is that the
contest is over at 24:00 so I could stay up for it.   An hour and six
minutes of the four hours is lost but I am still pretty sober not having
consumed too much - thank God.   Lets give it a try.

         Well this contest was an absolute toot - I enjoyed it from start to
finish.   I like short contests!    I worked 130 QSOs, in 32 DXCC and 27
Russian regions for a score of 43,011.    At the start I was not hearing any
of the Russians who were spotted so worked some EU stations, then I started
a "run" and gradually Russian stations started calling in.    During this
time I worked Greece and the UAE.   Later things started to flag and the USA
was coming in so about ten North American QSOs were added of course
including VE1ZZ, Jack as a starter.   This activity from W/VE was good as
for the last hour the contests really flagged.   There were not that many
Russian or EU entrants but it was a most agreeable evening and all the more
so as it was not expected.

 

     Post Contest by a couple of minutes V5/DL3DXX in Namibia was worked for
a new 160M entity.     

 

     It seems that the inverted L on the original SteppIR radial field is
not doing too poorly.    I hope to improve this before the Stew Perry.
Thanks to all.

 

                     73 Doug EI2CN