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| red=CW green=SSB |
In the past I was always looking forward to this 10m contest. Investigating the 10m band days before the contest and analyzing my chances to work great DX. However it looks like I have less time for the hobby now. At least I didn't have much time Saturday which resulted in only 30 contacts in the log. There was some more time Sunday. First QSO in the morning today was with 3W9A (Vietnam) when it was still dark here. The propagation was not the best, signals not really strong but stations were workable.
Unfortunately I discovered something is wrong with my 4 element LFA antenna. Normally I have a good SWR at 28.500 MHz with a bandwidth of about 1 Mhz. But now the SWR was 1,5 at 28.035 MHz and rising fast beyond that frequency. Actually on 28,500 MHz the SWR was 1:3. But still it is working... So I'm not shure what is wrong? We'll see in spring, it is too cold now for antenna work.
With "only" 40 DXCC worked this weekend this was not my best ARRL 10 contest but certainly not the worst also. Propagation was a lot better last year...
Of course I was tracking fellow blogger VE9KK again. He has unbelievable good ears in my opinion. I could barely copy him through all the signals but it seems he had no problem with me. I remember years ago Mike was living in another part of Canada with antenna restrictions, he had a mobile antenna just outside the house to make some contacts. At that time my antenna situation was not the best as well. I never imagined I would contact Mike almost every contest 10 years later. So whenever I get the chance I will try to make the contact.
In the end I made 150 QSO in total. Most of it with stations from the USA. Of course it is an ARRL thing so it's obvious that this contest is most populair in the US. As always I had fun and worked some nice but not new DX. In a few years the 10m band will be closed often. The fun is that I think it is more of a challenge to participate in this contest in the solar minimum.
Just an interesting note: I worked more CW contacts as SSB this year! And again I imagine I recognize more and more CW...
4 comments:
Good evening Bas, my ears are not all that great but its the rig (Icom 7610) and with the filtering I use with it. I did ask for a repeat regarding your serial number but it was me just being sure as I did hear it the first time. Yes I am very thankful to be here on the Atlantic coast and using a much better antenna. It was great that you hunted me down again and we were able to make contact.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
Hello Mike, always a pleasure to QSO with you. You better ask twice instead of not knowing for shure what number it is. Many stations did that. Only once I had a station transmitting my number back to me, not shure what to do then. I did give him a TU TU. Not shure it was the right thing to do. Sometimes I wished for a larger tower. The 10m beam is only up 14m (45ft). Should be enough (more as 1 wavelength) but there are trees and surrounding buildings that attenuate the signal I'm afraid. Well Mike, till the next QSO. Somewhere in the future I hope to make a sked with you and do a real CW QSO, not only the 5NN thing. 73, Bas
Hi Bas. If the station adds question-marks to the exchange, they want a confirmation. If it was correct, I just send "R R TU". If they don't send a question-mark, I won't reply anymore to leave them in their flow. Unless it's incorrect I sent "NO NO NUM 123 123 BK". Not 100% sure if this is the correct way, but it works fine.
I worked only 37 (concentrated on mults for an attempt to grab my last 3 states). When I started around 15:30 local time, cdx were bad Stattesside, but soon after they improved and stations were booming in from all over the continent.
Hallo Martin, bedankt voor je reactie. Ik laat de computer het seinen doen, heb niet eens een paddle of iets. Dus zal nog een geheugenplaats programmeren met R R TU. Als iemand mij het verkeerde nummer zend heb ik al een geheugenplaats die rapport en 2x de exchange zend. Hoop dat je die 3 staten hebt kunnen werken. Cdx naar west coast waren niet super. Maar kan ook aan mijn defecte antenne hebben gelegen. 73, Bas
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