ARRL DX Contest

[K3STX]

I wonder how you guys fared in this weekends contest. I had a blast searching and pouncing (no CQs answered). Three highlights for me.

1. Finding 20 meters open at midnight local time with good sigs to South America. Normally 20 meters is dead in even the early evenings here.
2. Working JT1FDD after only one call, working D4B on 5 bands.
3. Adding 30 countries toward my 80 meter DXCC using my 40 meter dipole fed with ladder line.

All in all, tons of fun. I have never been so flattered to have a logbook full of "599s".
paul

[NZ3M]

I had a blast "searching and pouncing"as well.

A couple highlights for me are,

1. Actually being able to copy at these speeds (a QSO a day, put the pencil away).

2. After moving to 20m Sat. evening, on a hunch went back to 15m and found quite a few Japan stations to work. JAs are tough here on the east coast.


Dave

[N8CPA]

Due to a treatment for sciatica on Friday, I could not sit in my contest chair long enough to do anything significant.

However, I was thrilled to work ZF1 and V31 stations, one right after the other. Why? Because I'll be visitng those countries shortly. It fed my excitement for my upcoming cruise.

!!

[WA3KYY]

I also did the S & P routine. Due to family matters I wasn't able to put in a significant effort and was severly hampered on 80M due to interfence to our DSL modem.

I did pick up two all time new countries (A6, United Arab Emirates & 4P/4S Sri Lanka) and boosted my totals on all bands. Since I couldn't put in a real effort, I by-passed a whole lot of stations to concentrate on new countries by band/mode.

I made a total on 90 QSOs, 79 of which counted as "new" in some fashion.

73,
Mike

[K3UD]

Working 21 different countries on 80 with 100 watts and a low half sloper in the very short time I had to devote to it this weekend.

73
George
K3UD

[KC2KFC]

I worked the contest on Saturday using the S&P method. I added 2 new contries to my list (Egypt and Peru) and had a whole lot of fun. I'm not a big contester, but the CW contest is fun. Nice quick exchange and a nice pace.

Started on 15 in the morning and slowly worked my way down to 40 in the evening. I did work several JA's when I decided to try bouncing back up to 15 in the early evening.

[W5ALT]

I played around Saturday trying out my new rig, in between work going on at the house. Using my doublet up 25 feet and a tuner with 100 watts, I managed 61 countries - all on 15 meters. I guess the rig works OK.

73,
Walt, W5ALT

[WS2L]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (N8CPA @ Feb. 23 2004,04:34)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Due to a treatment for sciatica on Friday, I could not sit in my contest chair long enough to do anything significant.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
I feel your pain my friend, I have permanent nerve damage to my left sciatic and know all to well how difficult it is to sit for any amount of time. Wish I could have joined in but my HF antenna is down and can&#39;t get my son to go on the roof safely until the snow is gone and it&#39;s a bit warmer. Congrats to all who worked new countries.

[NI1N]

I search-and-pounced my way to about 1200 QSOs and 384 band countries on 10 through 80m (no antenna for 160), giving my vertical antennas a good workout again. No new ones, but 2 new &quot;band countries&quot;.

I tried CQing for a short while (half hour or so on 20, then again on 40), which is something I don&#39;t normally do in contests. It doesn&#39;t interest me to work a bunch of common DX entities, but it never hurts to try because there are always at least a few rare DX stations that don&#39;t CQ themselves but don&#39;t mind handing out a few multipliers. Unfortunately, it seems they never call me :P

For those who aren&#39;t familiar with it, the ARRL DX Contest is nice for hams in W/VE-land because people in other countries can only work the USA and Canada. So, the pileups are smaller and you&#39;re competing with stations whose propagation is at least somewhat similar to yours. You have a much better chance of working JT1CO on 80 meters when you&#39;re not competing with a hundred JA stations&#33; So, you can often work many more DX stations, especially on the low bands, than you might be able to work in the CQ WW DX contest.

The SSB version is March 6th and 7th. If you&#39;re looking to increase your country counts but have been turned off by contests like the CQ WW, give this one a try :)

73,
Tom, NI1N

[WF7I]

For collecting countries and DXCC chasing, these contests cannot be beat. I heard all sorts of new ones on 40m and 15m was open all day. I just wish I had been at home with my 50ft high inverted vee, instead of on the road with my mobile whip&#33;