RAC winter contest.....

The RAC winter contest is a nice short 24 hour all mode contest you can operate all modes or just SSB, CW, FM or AM  if you want. No matter what your niche in ham radio is there is a corner in this contest you can participate in from 160 meters all the way to 2 meters. In past years this contest was very close to Christmas and with family commitments it was very hard to give some time to the contest. This year it was held one week before Christmas...still a busy time of year for me but late Saturday afternoon I was able to contribute as a point giver in the contest. I stayed with 20 meters only using my attic dipole and 10 watts. I made a grand total of 30 contacts I logged all the contacts using N1MM contest program

BUT all contacts were made with my key and not the programs macro's. I made this a goal to not depend on the program for the code but to do all sending and receiving myself. I find this to be a rather laid back contest so I took a big step and starting calling CQ RAC. Overall it went very well there were a few times that I received the contest exchange from a station then forgetting to send them my info. After their "ditty dum dum ditty" or ? ? it clicked and the info was sent to them. Then there was the pile up's...for me that's 2-3 waiting....I found I was  not fast enough to log and move on to the next contact. It all had to be paper logged until all were contacted then take a few minutes to log them. Oh well it is a learning curve and will take time. But I do want to keep up with it and slowly slowly  things will get better. For those of you who read this blog and were waiting for me to get back to you in the contest thanks for your patients. Next contest my plan is to get better and better at the code mixed with contesting.