I had planned to drive the 700 km to the station for CQWW CW last weekend but QRL thwarted my plans and I had to sacrifice Friday/Monday which were planned for travelling. Therefor only played SOSB15 remotely …
CONDX sucked! That certainly describes it best. 🙁 At least in Northeastern Germany. Never saw 15 m in such bad shape, not even in deepest sunspot minimums. Calling CQ with 500 W and our 6 ele OWA Yagi roughly brought half a dozen QSOs into the log. There were just no callers and even almost no skimmer spots for myself. Thus basically entirely a search and pounce event …
North America was open for roughly an hour on Saturday afternoon, made some 50 QSOs with difficulty. I didn’t even dream of working any zone 3 stations after having had trouble working any zone 4’s (just 4 in the log). No NA opening on Sunday, only heard 2 or 3 stations skewed path beaming South America … Worked one JA on Saturday so at least a double mult with z25 in the log. Even South America on the much easier north-south path did not even provide two dozen QSOs … Band closed around 14:30z both days. It’s been like weaning oneself from doing it ever again. But I didn’t want to change to SOAB in the middle of the contest … and lacking motivation a bit. 😉
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW Call: DH8BQA Class: SOSB(A)/15 HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 13 Summary: Band QSOs Zones Countries ------------------------------ 160: (15) 80: (68) 40: (54) 20: (46) 15: 314 33 119 10: (15) ------------------------------ Total: 314 33 119 Total Score = 117,800 Club: Bavarian Contest Club Comments: Elecraft K3, KPA500 + 6 ele OWA
Handed out a few QSOs on the other bands inbetween. To work Japan on 80 m Sunday afternoon 15z with our low hanging dipole and good signals was fun and kinda cool! 😎 Also HSØZAR made it into the log on “Eighty” providing a new band point. Not bad for the small ERP used. 🙂