It is fortunate this is one of those 48-hour GiGs that I wrote about recently. The contest weekend
was interspersed with client commitments Saturday morning followed by a holiday brunch for the Amateur Radio Club of Alameda (ARCA) - for which I am currently club president.
On the left coast, the start of the ARRL contest coincides with the end-of-the-day for 10-meters.
I got a late start (01:36z), running the K3/0-Mini from my office to the KN6NBT station that I run
remotely from Ramona California. The band was dead to most areas east of Ramona however,
the band was WIDE-open to Oceania (VK/ZL) with Hawaii and what was left of Japan. The REAL action would have to wait til 15:54z when I came into the office and spent an hour S&P'ing before
client work.
Rather than spend valuable operating time driving to Concord to setup the K3/0-Mini there, the decision was made to run WQ6X from my Alameda office after the brunch event and then, at 00:00z takeover the [remote] "helm" for NX6T. My job was to keep NX6T active until the band falls apart; which happened by 02:15z.
Arriving at W7AYT's QTH at 03:30z, the K3/0-Mini was setup in a portable fashion. On the oft-chance there might be any random band openings, CQ calls were made throughout the evening, rotating the yagi to various azimuth headings; unfortunately to no-avail. In the previous sunspot cycle, I would often encounter late evening 10-meter band openings around this time of year, leaving me the expectation it could happen again this year, which of course DIDN'T happen - Oh Wail.
This is a WQ6X FIRST - running the 10-Meter GiG QRP from Ramona California.
Client
and ARCA radio club commitments kept me in Alameda Friday and part
of Saturday, so I ran Ramona's K3 radio from my Alameda Biofeedback office
using a K3/0-Mini. Upon arrival @W7AYT, the K3/0-Mini was installed just
in time for a two-hour OP stint for NX6T finishing Saturday for me.
Sunday morning, the band started to open around 6am and amazingly enough
there was a Greyline opening to EU at 7am (15:00z). When that died, I went
back to bed for
a couple of hours and then picked up where I left off
around 10am until the GiG ended at 4pm.
Condx. to JA and Oceania where MUCH better on Friday/Saturday than Sunday,
altho a couple of Asian multipliers Sunday afternoon made up for the lack
of QSO volume.
There was LoTs of atmospheric noise all weekend, even tho no solar storms
were (to my knowledge) indicated so the K3-DNR was an absolute necessity.
Running Stereo-CW (see the WQ6X Blogs on that), made CW copy more effective. m
When it was all over, it would seem that NX6T took a 2nd-place (for the Southwest Division) behind the AOCC (Arizona Outlaws), while WQ6X managed a 1st-place for that division running Single-OP unlimited QRP - beyond that will be made known when they publish the contest results next year.
DiD YOU participate in the ARRL 10-meter contest?
IS NX6T or WQ6X in YOUR LoG?
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