It is Saturday morning at 0630 local and already 10 meters is wide open and almost wall-to-wall. Checking 15 and 20 meter bands shows the same thing. My poor little K2 is having trouble discriminating between the signals. My ears are having the same problem. 🙂  Sounds like conditions are great for this contest and I hope that there are many of you out there who are participating.
Please post your results here so that I can include them in the CTRI Champions competition leaderboard.
73, Ken Wagner K3IU, Keeper of the Leaderboard
Ken,
Based on your recommendations from Saturday morning, I spend the last half hour of the contest on 10 meters. My peanut whistle and wire had a tough time getting through the loud stations. Here’s my summary:
Single Op; low power; all band; non-assisted
I would have put in more time, but my trip to Delaware wore me down.
73, Mike, K1DM
I wasn’t going to put much into this contest but just when I thought I was out, it pulled me back in….. So I did a half effort. I skipped Friday night and got going on Saturday. Conditions on Saturday were interesting. In the morning, I thought my spotting filter had been mistakenly set to ignore all spots on 20. There was almost nothing. The reason? Everyone was up on 10! I am still fighting a persistent QRN here and haven’t been able to track it down. I hope to do so in the next week or so. But it wasn’t all that bad pointing to the NE. I spent no time on 80 since the 80 meter antennas are tuned to the CW portion and have high SWR on phone. Overall conditions were good but not as good as last fall. Sigs from JA were there but not as strong. I didn’t hear the spotted BY’s or YB’s but I guess some guys did and were working them. Conditions into the Eastern EU also weren’t making for strong sigs. My score is almost entirely S&P. Well, operating assisted, I mean it is mostly Pounce. I had some runs but my old FT1K is only putting out 60W on 10/15 and about 70 on the other bands.
I had fun. Heard Rick KI1G, W1DX, K1SD and that was about it.
This was a SOAB LP Assisted effort for about 20 hours.
BAND QSO OUNTRIES
160 1 1
80 0
40 106 54
20 322 78
15 330 81
10 585 100
————————————–
Totals 1344 314 = 1,266,048
Call: W1XX
Operator: W1XX
Station: W1XX
Class: SOSB/40 HP
QTH: RI
Op Time (hrs): 15.0 (+ 1.5 for 10 m)
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
————————————-
160: 11 11
80: 1 1
40: 704 88
20: 0 0
15: 2 2
10: 111 38
—————————————
Total: 829 140 Total 40M Score = 181,104
Club: CTRI Contest Group
Comments:
Question: What does a root canal and a 40 meter single band phone contest entry have in common? Answer: Everything! There are two ways to operate a DX contest on this band. Simplex, between 7128 and 7200; and split operating as close above 7200 as possible between the broadcast stations as possible and listening down between 7050 and 7125…which is a change BTW from my previous experience. In previous years I would listen down around 7025, admittedly in the CW band. 9A1A chided me for using 7040 or thereabouts as my responding frequency. Lo and behold he was right! US stations were not for the most part listening that low. I downloaded the Region 1 band plan and it seems they have clamped down on phone operation in the predominantly CW band. Don’t know if it’s a recommendation or law in each country but it doesn’t matter. I stayed above 7050 and in most cases above 7060 to listen for calls. Finding a transmit frequency not far above 7200 is also challenging….and I found very few US stations doing that. But it worked very well. The alternative is operating simplex on 7128 – 7200…and digging out the EU 100-watters is enough to give anyone a headache….even though I was getting 40 over nine reports from EU….and when someone crowds in on you, there is not much to do but press on and hope they will go away..avoid getting into arguments. Then there’s the rag-chewers: I am sure I would have worked the YB0 Sunday morning if it had not been for the ragchewers 1/2 KC away. Oh well.
I was asked to switch to 80 and 160 by a few stations needing the mult…so I accommodated. And I took a complete S & P sweep from just above 29.0 to 28.3 which took an hour an a half. Wow! No wonder why everyone operates 10 meters. Why can’t I be so smart?
So it sounds like everyone had a fine time. Ran across a few CTRI’ers here and there giving out the rather rare RI mult….K1SD had a pretty good pileup going on 10. Adios for now…73! — John, W1XX
ARRL DX Contest, SSB
Call: KI1G
Operator(s): KI1G
Station: KI1G
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: RI
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
——————-
160: 16 15
80: 47 41
40: 171 62
20: 204 87
15: 345 85
10: 518 101
——————-
Total: 1301 391 Total Score = 1,526,073
Club: CT RI Contest Group
Comments:
This mode is best operated in small doses.
Conditions seemed pretty good.
Hope everyone who played had some fun.
73
Rick
ARRL DX Contest, SSB
Call: K1SD
Operator(s): K1SD
Station: K1SD
Class: SOLP (A)
QTH: Rhode Island
Operating Time (hrs): 20
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
——————-
160:
80: 18 17
40: 61 37
20: 223 78
15: 216 75
10: 420 90
——————-
Total: 938 297 Total Score = 833,976
Club: CT RI Contest Group
Comments:
Got a start and it was real slow going for Friday and most of Saturday.
Never could get a run going, so nearly all S&P. Sunday finally got something
going on 10 and some on 20. A couple of long runs on 10 were a blast.
Any S&P on Sunday had to be mostly Search because of all the bad (intentional) spots.
Heard Jim KS1J and Rick KI1G.
73 James K1SD
I wasn’t sure how many hours I could operate. Most of the time I was in/out for short periods. N1MM only tracks off time per contest rules.
I was hoping to see a couple of CTRIers stop by. Tom, WA2RYV did stop by Saturday for a few hours. We caught up on old times and then I introduced him to modern PC rig control and N1MM. He was able to add over a hundred Qs to the log on 20M before heading out. I think he’s considering a little upgrade to his station now.
It was hard to break away for the more active bands like 10M and 15M. When you did, you would see an endless supply of red mults to work on the new band. At that point it’s hard to not work as many in the list before finding a run frequency. Conditions were great and I would have liked to put in more hours and see more guest operators. I did hear W1CTN many times, and W1XX, K3IU, K1SD, K1DM. Never heard KI1G but did see him spotted.
73,
John, W1AN