Monday, December 22, 2014

N6GEO & WQ6X Score another 1st place in the ARRL 10-Meter contest

For this year's ARRL 10-meter contest, due to commitments right up to the beginning of the contest, George and I were not able to begin antenna setup until 00:30z, with only enough daylight to pop the 6-BTV vertical into place.

Because George lives in a CC&R controlled neighborhood, to keep neighborly peace, the military mast supporting either a 2-element Stepp-IR or TH-3jr is setup and taken down JUST for radiosport events.  Otherwise, it's "antenna?  whut antennas?"
This year was no different.

Running the FLEX-3000 into a KPA-500 amp (dialed back to 149 watts) we ran the contest until band closing Friday evening using the vertical.  On Saturday morning I started up with the vertical while George erected the TH-3jr to it's 24 foot height (he repaired the mast since the last contest).  I had a therapy client at 11:00 and turned the radio over to George.

WQ6X
N6GEO

After coming back from the office I finished the Saturday operation, calling it quits at about 02:30z - there was just nothing left to work.  Getting the day off on Sunday I put in 8+ hours, running things right to the 00:00z ending.  Similar to this years RTTY RU I observed people making QSOs past the 24:00z ending - what ARE they thinking?  Those QSOs will be rejected by the log submission robot.


Just 2 days before this year's event I received a snail mail delivery of last year's 1st-place EB Section certificate for this contest.  Technically we made fewer QSOs this year than we did last year, however our higher score for 2014 came from making a significantly higher percentage of this year's QSOs on CW which are worth 4-points each instead of 2.


Propagation-wise, we experienced a nice opening to Europe Saturday morning but not so much on Sunday, which replaced Europe with a super opening to South America and Mexico; altho we only worked a handful of Mexican states.  Multiplier-wise we worked all states but ID, MT & WV, also missing several of the rarer VE sections.





Did you work the 10-Meter contest?

Is N6GEO in your log?  On BoTH CW & SSB?

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