Used almost all of Saturday to identify & fix some station interference issues. Uwe, DL3BQA, was doing a serious SOSB15 effort while I “only” wanted to hand out some QSOs and gain points for the BCC’s “Frequent Contester” program again. Re-routed a number of coax cables in the shack, put what felt like at least 100 ferrite cores onto various cables, a.s.o. Many thanks to Heiko, DG1BHA, for his assistance. Not yet everything cured 100% but much better already. Still puzzling over all the interstation interference we had during the last month’. The station has been up and running for over 10 years now without any big troubles but we also changed a number of things recently. So still some more analysis and work needed I guess.
A little more active on Sunday then and even able to hold a run frequency on 20 m for a little longer than a few minutes, wow! That’s really rare over here. 😉 Running on 80 m is usually fun in WPX providing excellent rates. But it also always (!) brings up all kinds of howlers: someone playing music on one’s run frequency, recording one’s CQ call and playing it on the same frequency for a few minutes (at least I had a nice small pileup afterwards, hi), or recording and playing back only single syllables in a repeat loop. Or the ragchewers (nothing against ragchewing in general, it’s one facette of our hobby) and net controls who think they own frequencies even if you were already using it for over an hour (well, their net just started now and I was on *their* frequency … they probably paid for it, right?). Or the guys who felt disturbed working each other across town being 3 kHz away but having their filters open for 4 kHz for some more fidelity (well, I didn’t hear them at all with my 2,8 kHz SSB filter bandwidth and they were very strong, too). And most of them not even able to tell you their callsigns … All a bit nerving but I had already experienced it much worse and the fun of running rate finally outweighed it. 😉
It should have been leisurely 1 million points. Then 1.000 QSOs, then 1.500, then 2 million points, then 2.5 million, then 1.616 QSOs for a nice number, but as there was still some time left it was finally reaching 2.8 million points just 3 minutes before the contest was over. These always readjusted goals and next steps really help to keep your butt in the chair! 😎 It was great until the end, not even a suggestion of fatigue. Probably the result of having a good night’s sleep both nights before and only getting up at 7z. 😉
CQWW WPX Contest, SSB - 2021 Call: DH8BQA Class: SOAB HP QTH: JO73ce Operating Time (hrs): 24 Summary: Band QSOs ------------ 160: 58 80: 580 40: 405 20: 560 15: 28 10: 5 ------------ Total: 1636 Prefixes = 783 Total Score = 2,805,489 Club: Bavarian Contest Club Comments: FLEX-6600, PA + beams & dipoles