WQ6X Walks a Wandering Contest Weekend

Overall, after the JIDX contest, April radiosport activities are relatively quiet affairs as we move thru to the end of the month.  The weekend of April 23rd certainly confirms that observation.  The Amateur Radio Club of Alameda (ARCA) run their monthly meetings on the 4th Saturday of each month, taking advantage of this Quiet Period.

I wrote a BloG about this phenomenon months BE-4 the online visit from Bob Heil (K9EID).  Afterward, I tuned around the bands looking for callers in the following radiosport events:

• [X] SPDX RTTY Contest
• [X] Helvetia Cw / Ssb Contest

Increasingly, I actually favor RTTY contests over Cw or Ssb, as the events seem more relaxing. 
Due to the poor turnout on RTTY, I experienced virtually no QRM, except from stations who purposely zero-beat my RUN frequency (Ex: 14086.86) and call CQ.

In most RTTY contests, over the years, Japanese participation has noticeably increased. 
The ONE exception to this is the weekend of the SPDX RTTY contest; also that weekend
was a Japanese domestic contest (not unlike our November Sweepstakes or NAQP GiGs)
on Cw.  40-meters (in particular) was LOADED with Japanese callsigns, all working each
other only.  At 10:00z an undecipherable higher-speed RTTY station  made the scene,
transmitting non-stop for several hours, until it faded into the after-Greyline noise.

Hoping for non-JA Asian participation, I turned to the Asian Russian military beacons, looking
for clues.  The "F" beacon (Vladivostok) has been AWOL for weeks.  The "M" beacon (Magadan) usually accompanies the "K" altho this weekend it was either off-the-air, or unreadable due to weird propagation paths between the SF East Bay area and Eastern Asia.

Due to the nonsense going on in the Ukraine region, I guess I should not be surprised to experience erraticness in other areas of their "system".  Then again, while Switzerland is not that far removed from the Ukrainian conflict, the Helvetia GiG lumbered-along quietly.

The Helvetia contest (being a European-based event) is always a disappointment to me on the
Left-coast of the USA.  The high-point Swiss stations are barely discernible on the West coast
w/o access to the antenna system I have access to when running remote from WA6TQT in Anza, California.

Except for the 3-element Long John yagi for 10-meters, the rest of the antenna system possesses little hope for working into Europe.  Unfortunately, 10-meters was hardly open at all during the weekend; certainly not to Europe.  I think of the Helvetia contest as an affair between Europe
and the East coast (or upper Midwest). 

While HB stations were heard (and many more spotted), no European stations ever came back
to my calls; I'm sure they would've appreciated making multi-point contacts as well.  

As I say all too often:  "Oh Wail - there's always next year".

 

What about YOU?  Did You play in those radiosport contests?

What was YOUR Experience?