I took the chance to activate the DKØWRTC special call during the Worked All Germany contest last weekend. Focus was on maximizing QSO count thus not paying any attention to multipliers. Certainly not the right strategy to win a contest but to place on top in WAG you need SO2R technique (to max out QSO count as well as pick up all the mults on the second radio) which is not available at my station yet. Therefor my overall result is not the best (but should be sufficient for a TOP 10 ranking) but I sure had much fun and this is what counts! 🙂
Unfortunately all the QRL stress during the last weeks and month’ as well as not having enough sleep (drove the 700 km to the contest QTH during the night from Friday to Saturday after being in QRL for 12 hours before) took it’s toll so right in the middle of a nice 80 m CW pileup around local midnight I fell asleep. 🙁 Tried to continue afterwards but needing 5-6 seconds to translate any received letters into what needed to be put into the log just was not satisfying what people would expect from an operator with that callsign. So I decided to QRT and get some sleep. Five hours later the world looked okay again. 😉
I did almost exactly 2.100 QSOs (including dupes) in 19 hours op time (needed the full 24 hours for that last year) which means an average of > 100 QSOs per hour all the time. Really great stuff, where else can you do that as a “one of thousands” DL station? 😉 I’m sure 2.500 QSOs would have been possible going the full distance. My best 60 minutes rate was 186 which is a new personal record during WAG. But I think the special call was acting as a catalyst, too. 😉 I just need to improve my CW further. While working contest QSOs at 24 to 30 wpm is not that much of a hurdle anymore having more than 3 people calling at once is still a challenge. 😉
Surprise surprise! Who would have thought that 10 m would open up again? The band was open into North America Saturday an hour before the contest started so I could already hand out the special call and special DOK (WRTC) to a number of guys on 10 m. Unfortunately the band closed quite quickly after the contest had started so I QSY’d down quite quickly. It opened again on Sunday with nice signals on the southern path’ but North America just came in on skewed path beaming South America and the Caribbean. But the band was good enough for a number of backscatter contacts, too, although this was hard work at times. After all I was quite satisfied with 300 QSOs on a supposedly dead band. 😉
Somehow I couldn’t get anything going on 20 m SSB. This was the second time already now. 🙁 Running full legal limit and a 4 ele Yagi just didn’t cut it, don’t ask me why. Maybe I was just there at the wrong times, who knows. Next weekend in WWDX-SSB Uwe, DL3BQA, is going to start SOSB20 (while I’ll go for SOSB15) so I’m eager to see what he can work on the band.
After all an enjoyable time again. Thanks for all the QSOs, especially those who were worked on more than one band. CQ3L, E7DX, K1LZ, NP2X, OH0X, TM6M and UA7K were the guys who made it into the log 8 times out of 10 available band/mode slots, well done! And always nice to meet good old friends during WAG …
Worked All Germany Contest Call: DK0WRTC Operator(s): DH8BQA Station: DH8BQA Class: SO Mixed HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 19 Summary: Band CW Qs SSB Qs Mults ---------------------------- 80: 304 301 51 40: 261 210 63 20: 247 35 55 15: 231 183 60 10: 200 107 57 ---------------------------- Total: 1243 836 286 Total Score = 1,650,506