Category: Contesting

CQWW 2015

Spent a few hours playing in the 2015 CQ WW contest. Didn’t play nearly as long as I did a couple years ago.

10m was pretty active, and that’s where I ended up spending most of my time tuning around. 10m was good for getting to EU early in the day, and then into South America mid to late afternoon. Late afternoon/early evening when 10m started fading out was when I started hearing stations across the Pacific. Grabbed a few contacts on 20m when 10m died out, and snagged a contact on 40m toward the end of the contest just to cover that end of the spectrum.

Even though the number of QSOs and my score didn’t match what I did in 2013, still had a few good highlights this year.

  • JA7OWD (Japan) on 10m
  • VK2GGC (Australia) on 10m
  • KL7RA (Alaska) on 20m
  • TF2LL (Iceland) on 20m
  • KG4EM (Guantanamo Bay) on 20m

109 QSOs across 3 bands this year. I’m happy with that.

 Band     QSOs     Pts  ZN    Cty
     7       1       3    1    1
    14      24      60   13   18
    28      84     221   16   39
 Total     109     284   30   58
Score: 24,992

Kansas QSO Party 2015

Got on the radio for the first time in quite a while (since Field Day I think) to play in the Kansas QSO Party for the first time. The KS QP is one of those two day contests, Saturday and Sunday. Rain and thunderstorms here on Sunday meant that I only got to play radio on Saturday.

One of the fun things the organizers did this year was have a bunch of 1×1 stations participating, which would spell KANSAS SUNFLOWER QSOPARTY if you worked enough of them. I managed to work enough stations to spell KANSAS, and was short only an R station to spell SUNFLOWER.

Managed to make 22 contacts on 20m and 40m. Strangely enough, with the exception of two stations, the only stations I was able to hear were the 1×1 stations. Maybe if I had played for a few more hours I might have found some other stations.

Fun QSO party to play in. Hope to be able to participate in it again next year.

Georgia QSO Party 2015

Spent some time playing in the Georgia QSO party this weekend. Band conditions were pretty terrible this weekend and I only worked a handful of stations on Saturday. I couldn’t even hear WWV on any of its frequencies, which is really unusual. Normally I can always hear the 10MHz WWV signal, but this weekend it wasn’t anywhere to be heard. Later in the evening the 15MHz WWV signal popped up, but that was it.

Spent most of Sunday at the radio tuning around 40m looking for more GA stations. Did a little better and ended up the weekend with 42 QSOs and 34 counties.

Highlights included:

  • 2 AB4 stations.
  • Worked KK4UBQ again. Worked her last year in the 2014 QP when she was signing as KK4UBQ/AG.
  • More QSOs, more counties than last year (although that wasn’t hard to beat).

Had a good time tuning around the bands, even though propagation was down in the dumps.

 Band     QSOs     Pts  Mul
     7      42      42   34
 Total      42      42   34
Score: 1,428
1 Mult = 1.2 Q's

NC QSO Party 2015

Spent the afternoon yesterday playing in the North Carolina QSO Party and finished up with 49 contacts (including 2 bonus stations and 1 bonus county) and 40 multipliers. Like last year, it was all on 40m. There were a few very faint stations that I could hear on 20m, but none clear enough to work.

Haven’t worked out my final score yet (over 4000 according to N1MM+), but it easily topped last year’s total. Had a lot of fun playing in the contest and it was nice getting back to the radio.