Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the QTH this weekend so only spent some limited time in the CQ WPX CW remotely. Great Sporadic-E conditions all weekend long so kept going on 10 m single band and managed a whopping 850 QSOs. 🙂 Of course there was not much DX in it, a few South Americans, some nice (but few) Caribbean DX and a bit of (the closer) Asia. A VK5 called in on Saturday, another VK7 on Sunday, providing an ODX of about 16.000 km. Also great to find a lonely XRØYS by search&pouncing Saturday evening when the band was almost closed. 😎
A detailed analysis is available here. Should be good enough for a TOP 6 finish worldwide. Only after the contest I recognized that I even broke the current German record, who would have thought that? But the margin is quite small so will have to wait and see how much the log check will take away and if it will still be a new record by then (I think not).
CQWW WPX Contest, CW Call: DH8BQA Class: SO(A)SB10 HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 21 Summary: Band QSOs ------------ 160: (2) 80: (6) 40: (6) 20: (4) 15: (5) 10: 862 ------------ Total: 848 Prefixes = 499 Total Score = 524,948 Club: Bavarian Contest Club Comments: Elecraft K3 / KPA500, 600 W + 6 ele OWA Yagi
I stopped every now and then during the contest to monitor 2 m for ES openings. There were indeed some openings but I was always too close to the ES clouds so no QSOs on 2 m this time (but great short skip on 10 m … worked OK’s and DL’s not further away than 250-300 km with s9+ signals!).
Saturday afternoon provided UN7AM/LN53 for a new square on 6 m while doing a short propagation check. 😎 Sunday morning saw a great opening deep into Asia on 50 MHz. Could hear BDØAAI (z23!) at 529, BA4SI at 539 and BVØWPX at up to 559 but couldn’t raise them, thus missed 2 new DXCCs and 3 new squares which was quite frustrating. 🙁