This past weekend was the CQ WW CW contest which if I can I always partake in. This year I made it a point to set aside the time to indulge.....well I'm retired now so it's really not all that hard to set the time aside. But this time around it was going to be a toss-up whether the monitor troubles I was having were going to give me issues. In a nutshell, if the monitor was turned off it was a 50/50 chance I could be greeted with a black screen. If that was the case I then had to play around starting and restarting the PC and turning the monitor off and on to get it working again. My solution was during the day when I took a break from contesting was to leave the PC and monitor on. This seemed to work very well and it was only when the PC was turned off at night did I only have one time with issues trying to get the monitor up and working.
I was really looking forward to seeing how the new upswing in the solar conditions treated me with my 100 watts of power into a mediocre Endfed antenna. I did have plans to hit the airwaves on Friday evening but Julie and I decided to have a date night COVID style at home with a home-cooked meal and a movie. On Saturday and Sunday, I was able to spend a good amount of time in the operating chair. The new solar conditions made the contest a pleasure!
There was really no dead bands from 10m to 80m in my case. The highlight for me was making contact on 2 occasions with Hawaii both times on 15m. There were other possible opportunities with some exotic places but the pile-up was that of a DXpedition. I did not want to waste valuable time to make or not make the contact.
It was a pleasure to see 10m meters open and it had me rope some contacts in South America and Europe and well as the U.S. I also gave 80m a shot as I can use my external tuner (AT200Pro II) to get a decent SWR. This opportunity netted me some U.S contact points.
My score for sure is not going to be in the CQ WW CW record books but I really enjoyed this contest and the propagation brought even more joy and really had me staying in the radio chair to make contacts.
Below is the score breakdown:
4 comments:
Hello Mike,
39 countries on 15 meters - fantastic! I hope that bodes well for the winter DX season and isn't just a one-sunspot event.
73 - John
Good afternoon John, I was very happy with the part-time results of the contest. Yes lets hope the conditions stay the same or let's be greedy and hope they improve!
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Excellent results Mike, well done!!
73, Bill VE3FI
Good morning Bill very nice to hear from you, I agree 100%, and I am hoping this is not a one off and the conditions are on an uphill swing.
73 and have a great week,
Mike
VE9KK
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