PACC 2026 review

 

27MHz how???

    I decided to participate in the QRP mixed section again but only do CW. I was not able to participate till the end and begun late on Saturday. Stopped early at 9:30 UTC. I did meet my goal of working all the CWA students and advisors in the CWops CWA Intermediate 2026 course here in the Netherlands.

In total I did about 10 hours of contesting. I'm satisfied with the results. However my most important goal was to make less errors. Not shure if that happened. Especially during the late evening and later Sundaymorning I went tired and not as sharp anymore. I remember I had a big problem to copy a S58 station, luckily he kept repeating his call and after at least 6 times I got it. There were also stations that kept keying at high speed. Probabely not realizing this costs time after all because I kept asking for repeats. But overall decoding CW went well I think. I see an big improvement in numbers copy which I do now nearly automatic.

White=several bands Purple=80m Blue=40m Yellow=20m Brown=15m Pink=10m

Some highlights J38TT on 10m and JR6CSY on 15m. I also contacted FR/UR9IDX on 10m but he was probably not in the contest, I worked him anyway. The station in Africa can't be right, SM5XU/5OO repeated his call several times so I put it in the log, strange. I realize I have it wrong. Could it be SM5/UX5OO? Most likely yes, UX5OO is an existing call. I will correct this. It is easy to mix up the X with a slash. Another error is something in the log I can't explain yet. It seems I have made CW QSOs on 27MHz???. Not possible at all....have to check out what this error is. Never had this before...

A total of 47 DXCC were worked. The PACC is not really a DX contest. Most participants are from Europe and Russia. There are a few from USA/Canada but most of them are in the WW RTTY contest which is also running this weekend.

I had a lot of fun again. And doing CW is still a big challenge for me. With morserunner I train to get the call in 1 time. But in reality I have to ask for at least one repeat before I have the whole call. I also am not really fast in typing in the calls. Some stations already made a 3 time repeat before I typed the call and hit enter. For the first time in this (and any other) contest I did 99% running. I did some S&P but this was only to find an empty spot to run. I have to write that I didn't have to call long to get a pile-up. And when someone was spotting me the frequency went crazy. But overall I kept cool and quiet, with some patience I did work everyone who was calling. 

This year was not my best score. But I don't really care. I don't want to have a trophy, I just want  to have fun and relax. Winning this section is not within reach for now. I keep training with CW and hope next year it will get better.