A lost weekend - ARRL 10m contest

  

    A lost weekend, that is what my XYL call it. Not for me it is. But I can imagine for someone that is not interested in a hobby like we have it is of course a lost weekend. I think this contest is a lot of fun. World wide DX can be heard and worked. You hear the signals fading in and out. Signals become stronger when the sun rises and are getting faint when the sun is gone behind the horizon. It is pure magic especially when the propagation is good.

     Unfortunately the propagation was not, what I call, excellent this weekend. But it was still good enough to get a 100W signal heard all over the world. Saturday was a bit better as Sunday. I've been looking in my archives and think this year was my best ARRL 10m contest ever. What helps is my knowledge of CW now. I have to write that I was overwhelmed with the speed of keying and used CWskimmer at first. But I noticed I was barely looking at it since I was decoding with my ears and brain. Not that it is without error but I did my best. I even did some running on CW and that went reasonable well. Highlight of the contest was working fellow blogger VE9KK again, and he was booming in, best ever signal I heard from him. I also worked OQ5M Franki, this time on SSB. I heard  Franki on CW but the pile-up was large so I gave up after a few tries. I had an awful moment when I worked AZ1D, it looks so much like a American call that I asked for a state, but of course it is an alternative Argentinian call. Anyway, I apologized and went on. DX heard but could not be reached were ZM4T, he had a faint signal but was readable, and a PZ5 station who had a huge pile-up. But overall I worked all the DX I could hear.

Purple=SSB&CW Red=CW Green=SSB

     A total of 88 DXCC has been contacted this weekend. Not bad at all. Imagine the participants worldwide all spend their weekend on the 10m band contacting each other to gather points. How useless is that? But it is great fun for all of them. An escape from the daily stress we sometimes encounter.

Will the 10m band be good next year. No one knows. The sun's activity will be lower and we are on the way to the solar minimum. I remember my efforts in this contest in solar minimum years....