2003 ARRL DX CW
15-16/02/2003
This turned out to be a bit of a low key contest on this side this year. I had a hectic week at work and by the time I got home (late) on Friday I was not feeling to well. I turned out that I had a sinus infection that was still with me even after the contest.
On top of it all I had a problem with my 10/15/20m antenna, as soon as I tried to run more than 5 w into it the SWR would go off the scale. As I was planning on running QRP this was not the end of the world but I knew there was a problem. It slowly got worse till Sunday afternoon, feeling better, I decided to go and have a look. It turned out to be a barrel connector connecting the feed-line to the balun that was almost open circuit! After fixing that suddenly the bands were open! 10 m sounded like at the peak of the solar cycle. As I was not happy with my score at that time I decided to just spend some time giving multipliers to the deserving, Over the last few hours of the contest I QSY'ed many many times!
Even with the problems I still had fun, I am sure I must have all the states now to complete my WAS QRP, I must just get the cards!
The only frustration I have with this contest every year, and in the past I have often switched off and gone and done something else, is that often I would hear a station/DXCC entity that I would really like to work, like a few I heard on 40m this weekend, but, because I can only work North American stations I cannot work him. VERY FRUSTRATING!
Some stats, I only ended up working about 15 hours because I was not feeling well and I spend a lot of time on 40m, even when the band was not all that great. This was because at least my 40m antenna was working well and I wanted to try and work all states on 40m with QRP. I ended with 1332 contacts, all 50 states on 40m and 10m. I did not spend much time on 15 or 20 as my antenna was really bad on those bands. After I fixed the antenna on Sunday afternoon (about 17h00 local, 15h00 UTC) I had lots of fun on 10m and added more than 50% of my total in the last few hours, when the band started to close at about 18h30 UTC I closed down as I was really tired.
I must thank all those sharp operators who got my 5w call first time on very crowded bands, FANTASTIC!
Hope to see you on the bands next year!