Saturday, February 18, 2012

Day one (for me) of the ARRL CW DX contest

Relaxing and contesting
Well as you know I was not on the air on Friday as the speed and pileups were just out of this world. So I managed to get things done around the house and hit the air on Saturday at 9am local time. At that time I found 10m to be dead but 15 was great! I was able to make 10 contacts on 15 meters with 500mW's...it's funny I am contacting folks who give me their power as 1KW and I am getting to them with 500mW's. Any way the conditions were great but I did take a break at around 1800 UTC as things were slowing down on 15m at that time and not yet picking up on 20m's. At around 1930 UTC I was back at it again but this time on 20m's for some reason I did try 500mW's but it was just not doing it so I slowly made my way to5 watts. That seemed to be the magic power for 20m. The bands were alive and healthy out this way and I had a blast!! I have been on a total of  7.43 hours and made 252 contacts (all DX contacts that is) that breaks a record here of almost 34 contacts per hour. I have not started to log contacts for the ARRL DXCC diamond jubilee so this was the contest for me to get that rolling. Up to this point I have 50 contacts toward the certificate.  Sunday is another day and I plan to get up early to pounce on some 10m contacts and 50 more DXCC's......dreams are free as they say..........

7 comments:

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello Mike, I hope you did a good job chasing new DXCCs. I made 38 QSOs on 15/20m only. 73, Bas

PE4BAS, Bas said...

BTW great photo, would be nice on a QSL card !

VE9KK said...

Good evening Bas, So far I am up to 66 DXCC's but the bands are getting crowed now that the end of the contest in nearing and I am getting tired. As for for photo Julie surprised me with her shot.

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hi Mike, that was a good start. I hope the 1KW guy did not interprete your 500 mW as 500 W. Nice job. 73 Paul

VE9KK said...

Good morning Paul, yes the contest was a blast and I am going to blog about it. As for my power output in North America our exchange does not include our output power. We give signal repot and state or province. Today is a holiday here so I am going to relax and get some radio time in.

Jspiker said...

Hello Mike,

Fantastic contacts!You're doing great there!

VE9KK said...

Good evening John, as the contest progressed I was not trying to hit max contacts. It was more hunting DXCC countries. Some of the highlights were contacting 4U1ITC, two JA's and Cuba.