Initially I wanted to go the 700 km to the station and do the contest locally. Unfortunately two facts prohibited me doing so: First of all one of my grandmas died 🙁 and I had to spare 2 days of my holiday contingent to go to the funeral and pay one’s last respect to her. Secondly I was suffering from an angina of the salpingopalatine fold 2 weeks ago (incidently on the RUSDX weekend, sigh). While the original disease was cured in a few days thanks to some good antibiotic an adverse reaction was me loosing my voice almost completely (down to 10%)! 🙁 While it got better day by day after I was done with the antibiotic it was still far from good enough (about 70% Friday before the WPX) for a serious contest effort. Therefor I only spent a few hours remotely every now and then and as long as my voice held up to it and let Uwe do his choice of band (it would have been my choice this year but so be it, hi). He went for 20 m but unfortunately had some trouble with his amp and had to swap to a lower power amp on Saturday and couldn’t get much going with the lower power. He was quite frustrated, too …
CQWW WPX Contest, SSB Call: DH8BQA Class: SO(A)AB HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 12:30 Remote Operation Summary: Band QSOs ------------ 160: 12 80: 67 40: 138 20: 2 15: 81 10: 0 ------------ Total: 300 Prefixes = 235 Total Score = 172,020 Club: Bavarian Contest Club Comments: Elecraft K3, medium power with KPA500, 160 m lazy loop, 80/40 m dipoles, 20 m 4 ele YU7EF, 15 m 6 ele G0KSC OWA
Next “stop” will be the VHF contest on the first weekend of May and then WPX-CW at the end of May. Maybe I’ll find some time in-between for some more “regular” radio operations (if only QRL would allow, hi). Need to keep in mind the Sporadic-E season will probably start around mid- to end-April, at least on 6 m …