10 Meter Contest

I'm on 28.050 if you want to try and call.

 

cq test cq test de K9QOO K9QOO cq test k

 

Thanks a bunch. 73 - Mike

 

Saturday, 8:47 PM in central Louisiana. Propagation is limited to about 100 to 200 miles (CW), and most within that range are weak. We have one local contest station, N8OO, that is strong at my location.

 

From NC I've heard/worked out west to TX and into South America, all CW. The couple times I checked SSB, heard nothing. I hope to hear the west coast today.

 

Well the propagation gods except for about 30 minutes on Friday evening, were not kind at least at my QTH. As noted above all Q's were in AZ< CA and OR. I spent some time on Sat and Sun tuning the band (CW and SSB) and if I heard anything at all it was ESP. I called CQ a number of times on both modes and no responses. Well we tried

 

Conditions much worse than expected. I turned on the radio a few times and worked someone and often that was the only one I heard. Tuned in later and each time the same thing.

 

There was an opening to Texas today that put some signals on the scope but before and afterwards it was slim pickings. I ended up with 36 phone QSOs in the log.

 

From Texas: PA, VA, NJ, FL and 5 in South America. All between 1400Z and 2000Z on both days. Surprisingly, many from within Texas 120-250 miles away (and one 60 miles away). Another surprise, my inverted V at 30 feet worked better than my ringer ranger. 23 CW call signs logged. I didn't hear a single SSB signal. All but 3 sigs were right at the noise level and many needed a couple of "agn?'s" before we exchanged 599's.

 

Listen to how others do it.

 

It was rough going at NX5M, especially for a sideband op like myself. Almost bad enough to tempt to some being a loser and work on my code skills in 2020 (whose heard that before from me). But it was a lot of fun to hang out with the old crew again, hoping to be a bit more active in 2020.

 

This was my very first contest and I had a blast. It was definitely slow at times but there were some openings, mostly on Saturday. I was operating voice only low power (100w) from Pennsylvania with a homemade half wave dipole. Was surprised to make as many QSOs as I did. Also heard three South American stations but just didn't have the power for them to hear me. Ended up working 15 US states so I was more than happy.

 

Temporarily setup in the garage so I wouldn't bother the roommates. And just had the dipole strung up on one of my old decommissioned lightstands about 14' off the ground.

 

Adam, you're really doing a great job there! Ten meters is my favorite band but it is a very fickle one and right now any thing we can do to generate signals is good. Maybe one of these days good propagation will return. In the meantime, keep up the faith and maybe we will see you in a contest sometime.

From here, it is a long haul to the east coast on the ten meter band. At out club station (W7DK.org) even with a big antenna, up high, it was a slog to get any contacts...

Don't forget to turn in a log: in 2004 I only made 34 contacts. Turned in my log and won my section! I guess no one else bothered to turn in a log...

 

Cool beans!

Here in AZ I noted an opening to northern CA, OR, MT, ID.....TX and LA were in the mix too. I was set up for 40 and checked all beacons. When I heard some 10 meter beacons coming in, I tried using my tuner to match this dipole to 10 and it worked. I bagged the aforementioned states plus some locals.

I checked 10 again the next two days but no exploitable openings. Some South Americans would roll in but they didn't hold long enough to work them.