ARRL 10m DX contest 2002
A Personal point of view
After having lots of fun in the CQ WW CW contest running QRP I decided to give QRP a try as well in the ARRL 10m DX contest. I listened a lot on 28MHz the week before the contest and it was VERY quiet! At one point I thought I might have a contest with no contacts :-)
I did compete in this contest last year, running as a Single Operator Low Power (100w) but due to a log program error I lost most of my log, this was frustrating to say the least !. This year I came prepared with new Logging software. I used Lux-Log and I must say it worked well. The only problem was with the generated Cabrillo file for the contest entry, this was not correct with a column missing that I had to enter by hand, not FUN !. I also tried to register the software before the contest but I got no reply from the writer, well, at least I tried.... I am still looking for the "ultimate" contest logging software !
I decided to enter CW only, I am sure my throat would not stand 36 hours of shouting at QRP levels !, I do find CW far more relaxing than SSB.
The equipment I used were the same as for CQ WW CW. The Yaesu FT-817 is now equipped with a 250Hz CW filter and this really helps in a pile-up. The rig was running from a 12v battery feeding about 4w into my Cushcraft A4S only 8m above the ground. This might not sound like much of a station but I worked just about everyone I heard. QRP never fails to amaze me!
Conditions were not to great on Saturday morning, I heard hardly any stations from the east, I must admit at that point I almost dropped the contest to go and do something more productive, well, I am glad I did stay with it! Saturday afternoon things started to look better, signals were not that strong, seldom over S5 but lots of stations from Europe were heard and worked, later the band opened to the USA as well and signals started getting stronger. At one point, at about 14h00Z the band from 28.000 to 28.150MHz was just one big pile-up!, great fun.
Running QRP I did not even try to call CQ as I am sure I would have had no chance but by slowly working up the band I managed to get the QSO rate up a bit. If I heard a station I have not worked before but I could not get him in a few calls I would save the frequency in a memory to go back and try later again. This worked well as it is possible to get stuck on one station and miss many others. Once I got to the top I would go back to the bottom and start again. Before the contest I decided that this would not be an all out effort and that I would take some breaks to do other things around the house so I decided that if I went through the band twice without any new QSO's I would take a break. This worked quite well as after an hours or so of doing something else there were new stations to work on the band. This is not the right way to win a contest but it makes the whole exercise more relaxed and fun.
Sunday was similar but the band opened a lot earlier in the morning, the only problem was finding new stations that have not been worked before, initially I was aiming for 300 contacts or 100000 points, Sunday afternoon it became apparent that this would be possible so I kept on raising the target. I ended up with 404 QSO's, 46 states and 56 DXCC countries for a total of 164424 claimed points. I thought this was not to bad for a first attempt at this contest running QRP from a small station. Now we have to wait for the final results !. I wonder what would be possible with a dedicated effort? Maybe I will give it a try next year from V5!
Some highlights were being called by SU9US while working another station, a quick QSY and I had a new one on 10m CW in the log !. The weekend did not bag any new DXCC countries but it did give me 7 new band-countries and many USA states. 9M2/G4ZFE and XW1IC were also unexpected but nice catches during the contest.
As normal for CW contests there were some really great operators that manages to copy my weak signal first call on a very crowded band. I only heard one case of bad behavior, if you compare this to the SSB crowd......
I find these contests, even if just entered casually, as great training exercises for my CW as well as general operating technique, the more you practice the better you get. I can remember how scared/nervous I used to be of making CW contacts!Nnow it is just fun fun fun!
Hope to see you on the band next year!
RESULTS:
I have just received my final result and certificate for this contest, I must admit that I was really surprised at the speed of getting the results and the fact that I received my certificate at the same time ! (CQ take note! I am still waiting for certificates from 3 years ago!) I attained the following:
Class: Single operator CW only QRP
Country standing: First place South Africa
Continent standing: Continent Leader
World standing: 7th place worldwide