PACC 2021 contest review

Event: PACC 2021

Section: QRP mixed

Logger: N1MM+ 

Station: Icom IC-7300 at 5% (5W)

Antenna 1: 160m sloper

Antenna 2: 10m LFA @14m

Antenna 3: Multiband vertical @16m

Antenna 4: 2x20m inverted-V doublet

It's my own descision to go QRP in this contest. I think it is the most difficult section. It takes a lot from the operator to make any QSOs and many stations will not hear you which at times is very annoying and frustrating. You'll find most stations have a lot of signal but bad receive. Actually my experience is that the stations that are the loudest have the worst receive of all. 

What amazed me this time was that I worked DX on SSB that I though was not possible with the minimum propagation these days. Propagation was so different from last year as well. I started late saturday afternoon, experience tells me this contest is a slow starter. Big surprise was a S9 signal from ZD7FT (St. Helena Island) on 10m SSB. The only signal on the band. He didn't do contesting but I had to work him with QRP....and I did, I even got a S7 report from Peter. Excellent! 20m closed early unfortunately, even before it went dark. 40m was not good either in the evening. I hoped for 80m SSB but there was a lot of QRM around. 160m was crowded last year, but this year I couldn't hear much. To compensate I had to do CW which is not my favorite but for QRP it does the job. However, I'm a very bad CW operator and I have to apologise to all stations that worked me, I probabely have a 20% reduction in the end because of wrong calls in the log or wrong contest exchange numbers on CW. Blame me, I've tried but I really need more practice. Well I decided to run on SSB at night on 80m in the end, against all odds. Someone did spot me and I had a small pile-up after all, not like with 100W but very good for 5W. A big surprise when K8UR came back to me....I mean 80m SSB QRP, imagine! Seems to be he's a 80m DXer and has a 7 element yagi for 80m!! In my last post VE9KK Mike wished me good luck in the contest at the comment. I replied I wish I could reach Canada but realised that would almost impossible with QRP. However, when switching to 40m CW at night I worked VE9ML and later on 80m CW I worked VE9AA, both from the VE9 area. those were certainly the highlights of the whole contest.

Not all stations I worked appear on the map since locators are unknown. So this result is approximately. I've not been really fanatic and tried to be with my family at times as well. Only 15,5 hours contest was enough for me. It was fun and that was most important.

PA3OES Andre who is living about 70km south from me did send me a nice video from how he did receive me on 10m CW with a Elecraft K3S. Andre does have a good receive....I did hear many other "local" stations on 10m and other bands as close as 5km from my QTH but they didn't hear me. However CW is of course "easier" as SSB...