Condx sucked, especially on Saturday. Worked just 35 JAs in the morning and barely half a dozen zone 3 stations in the afternoon, to name results for the two most difficult path’. A bit better on Sunday with 100 JAs and 35 zone 3 stations. Moaning now but we will certainly want these figures back in a few years. 😉 Decline into sunspot minimum sure has started …
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW Call: DH8BQA Class: SOSB(A)/15 HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 22:30 Summary: Band QSOs Zones Countries ------------------------------- 160: (18) 80: (7) 40: (163) 20: (28) 15: 1486 37 136 10: (4) ------------------------------- Total: 1452 37 136 Total Score = 582,318 Club: Bavarian Contest Club Comments: Elecraft K3, PA + 6 ele OWA Yagi
Interestingly there were still some strong echos at times I would not have expected under the rather poor conditions, here’s just one example:
HB9CZF with strong echos Sunday morning:
Worst key-klickers this time were K5YAA and R7AB. It’s “great” when these guys start CQ’ing a kilohertz away and you can throw away your run QRG due to their bad signals. 🙁 But good to see Jerry, K5YAA, took my comments serious as he requested some soundfiles. Must be a problem with his K3, keeping fingers crossed for him.
It was nice to work C92ZO during the contest, too. Not so nice when Marko started going split and putting his split RX on my run QRG about 1.2 kHz higher. 🙁 If you really need to work split during a contest then please do it way up in the band and not right in the middle of the band where stations are wall to wall! As the DX you will be spotted a thousand times anyway so it will not hurt you to go higher …
Worst frequency thief this time was EF8R. While it was certainly good that he at least asked “QRL?” before starting he waited a whopping 100 milliseconds (!) before throwing out CQs. Thanks for destroying the QSO I was just in (trying to dig out a weak WA5)! Of course he then ignored my “QRL QRL QRL” just 3 seconds later and kept on CQing … 🙁
Besides doing SOSB15 I handed out a few more QSOs on the other bands, too, when 15 m was closed. Some nice DX on 40 m in the log, it was kinda addictive. 😉 Condx on 160 m seemed to be great Sunday morning, worked a few US guys with real 599 signals, never seen such strong signals before (no special RX antennas overhere). Unfortunately I couldn’t break 8Q7DV’s pileup on top band although he had a decent signal …
K1TO being a great signal on 160 m Sunday morning:
Though putting a note onto the keyboard I forgot to switch on QSOrder for the first 2 or 3 QSOs Saturday morning, damn. 😉 But recorded everything else so if you are interested to hear how you sounded in northern central Europe just drop me a note at callsign @darc.de and I’ll be glad to share the MP3s.
Now let’s see how condx will evolve until ARRL-10M and if we can still do a few QSOs on “ten” then. Otherwise the next big ones will be CQ-WPX-RTTY and ARRL-CW in February from Aruba. Already looking forwarded going to the Caribbean. 😎
Edit 31.12.2015: Added CQWW CW contest audio to the website, have fun listening to it and see how you sounded in Northern Central Europe. 😉