CW | N4BC

ARRL Ten Meter Contest

Well, I hope you had better luck than I did! Just before bedtime on Friday night, I listened a bit on 10-meter CW and I heard a beacon and two stations within 20 miles of me … nothing else, and I went on to bed. Saturday and Sunday, I tuned around several times during the day and evening, and … nothing. Just a couple of unreadable maybe signals down in the mud on CW.

So, it looks like it was not to be for me. I think ten meters had a dagger through its heart this past weekend. But, I’ll see you on the lower bands!

73 de Dick N4BC

Propagation blues

You know times are bad when 20 Meters doesn’t have a single CW signal audible during a major contest weekend. I just tuned up there and couldn’t hear ANYTHING! NADA! Forty and eighty are really active … lots of contest activity.

I haven’t done any contesting this weekend. I just worked about 15 stations on FT8 with the new rig, and I did make a couple of QSOs to check out how it handles on CW. As far as SSB, I haven’t even taken the mic out of the box yet!

The IC-7300 is a SWEET rig to operate, but I’m still stumbling a bit with the controls. It’ll get better with familiarity.

73 de Dick N4BC

Pretty Poor Last Night

I got on for a while last night, but didn’t have much luck. I did work a couple of stations on 80 meters, but although 40 and 20 were pretty active on FT8, I just couldn’t buy a contact. I was running 15 watts, but there were some humongous signals on the waterfall. Either they had multi-element beams or were running some serious power.

I tried to connect with a British station /portable on St. Pierre et Miquelon on CW. He was up and down in the noise, but on the peaks he was about S5. No luck there either. Ah, well … I can always talk about “the one that got away.” It’s like fishing … sometimes you get a bite … sometimes you don’t.

Keep on tryin’ de Dick N4BC

Low Bands Rule

Got on 80 & 40 last night and worked about 15 stations around 2300/0000. Signals were pretty STRONG … some peaking well above S9. Most of the contacts were East Coast and Midwest. I did hear W6B in LA, but wasn’t able to get in. Eighty meters was the real workhorse, and that’s on my 31-ft vertical … not the most efficient of antennas.

Stations that heard me on September 13/14th on 80m

The higher bands were crappy! Twenty was really bad here at my QTH. Usually, in the afternoon when I get home around 1430, there’s a few CW stations going, but all I could hear was the ARRL CW practice transmission and a few stations down in the mud.

73 de Dick N4BC

IARU HF Contest

Wow … first time I’ve participated in a major contest in a long time. Not a truly serious competition … only about 150 QSOs over the 24-hour period. Enough for me, though. All S&P (search and pounce, if you’re not familiar with the term), and all CW.

Had contacts on all of the bands except for 80. Eighty was really noisy … I could hear some weak signals, but they obviously couldn’t hear me. Forty was good and twenty was also good. Fifteen and ten were workable, but not a lot of signals that I could hear. There were some strong ones though!

I’ve already got my LOTW logs uploaded, QRZ, ClubLog, and eQSL uploaded, and imported the N1MM .adi file into my logbook. Contest —> DONE!

The Yaesu 450D performed well. The DSP was a blessing to use. I really could bring a lot of the signals out of the mud and to a comfortable listening level.

All in all, it was fun … no regrets. Lots of stations, and I didn’t see any poor behavior … everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. That’s the way it should be.

‘Til next time, 73!
de Dick N4BC