Back again from my 2 x 700 km roundtrip to the contest station to participate in the Russian DX contest last weekend. Was not sure what to do, I did not feel fit enough for an Allband entry, QRL and the many hours on the highway simply took their toll. Not getting younger. 😉 Furthermore 10 m conditions had deteriorated quite a bit during the last few days. But I simply love that band so it should be a 10 m single band entry and taking conditions into account another single band entry on 80 m. Yes, in RDXC it is possible to enter 2 single band entries! This contest is quite unique in several ways. 😉
Luckily condx went up again during Saturday. Ten almost sounded like going to close at 17:30z but opened up again nicely about half an hour later. I then had a pipeline into California having a really nice run into the U.S. west coast and nothing else. 🙂 About an hour later the band changed completely, west coast vanished and the east coast got in again so I could run for another hour. The band finally closed Saturday night 21z. One of the highlights was being called by K2MFR/m who was just using 3 watts into a small mobile whip and was a solid S7 on my K3’s calibrated meter. Great!
Battled again with Tom, DK3EE, manning DK3T (not sure if it’s a battle for him, too, hihi). When he shut down Saturday evening (heard him last time around 17:30z so he might have thought the band went dead or maybe had other commitments) he had about 650 QSOs while I was just over 400. Ouch! But I could make good use of the mentioned opening and finally surpassed his QSO number and put some “reserve” into it before the band died on Saturday. 🙂
Sunday morning I got up at 5z. The band was already in full swing, had not expected that (and certainly lost some 40-50 QSOs)! So not even time for a coffee but just going ahead. Didn’t hear DK3T for the first 2 hours (or so) so could gain another few QSOs. But Tom easily ran past me later on. Well, he’s got 3 antenna systems in parallel while I’m just dabbling with one single yagi so after all I think I did hold up against him quite well this time. 😉
Working to the east has not been a pleasure during the last few month’. We have some new noise of about s3-4 into direction JA/UA0 which we could not locate yet. At least it’s nothing on our property but the strange thing is there is *nothing* into that direction for a few kilometers! So difficult to find out what the source is. 🙁 Due to that I could certainly not hear all of the usually weak JA callers, sorry guys. Russian’s were all really strong, a real pleasure. But as the case in all other contests, too, not too much going on in the morning, QSO rates not up to what we can do in the afternoons. Would have also thought that CW would be the better choice into Russia but not the case this time, constantly lower rates!
After all I am quite happy with the result:
Russian DX Contest Call: DH8BQA Class: SOSB/10 HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 15 Summary: Band CW Qs Ph Qs Countries Oblasts ---------------------------------------- 160: (4) 80: (7) (1) 40: (7) 20: 15: 10: 440 646 71 54 ---------------------------------------- Total: 440 646 71 54 Total Score = 778,000 Club: Bavarian Contest Club Handed out a few QSOs to friends on the other bands, too.
You might ask what about the 80 m entry? Well, after 10 m was open that long and I had to help a mate who called me with a computer problem after the band had closed I finally skipped that idea and took a good night’s sleep. Did I mention not getting younger? Or maybe it was just laziness, might as well have been the case. 😉
Now looking forward to WPX-SSB in 2 weeks. I will be attending a conference in Boston, MA for QRL the week prior to WPX. Carol, N2MM, was kind enough to invite me to participate in the contest from her place in NJ afterwards. Many thanks in advance! Reserved the club call NT3S for participation, so look out for me, please! 🙂