DH8BQA

Good memories about my first and only entry in CQMM 2014. Been thinking about entering it again for a few years already but never found the time. Well, different this year, at least some time available but the band (10 meters again, what else?) was basically closed all weekend long except for a few few-minutes-openings. Difficult to generate QSOs at all, most of them were locals which will probably be deleted from the log anyway as per the organizer’s rules on uniques. A small ES opening to UA6 Sunday morning with about a dozen stations on air but no one in the log, they were busy running another contest (“WSW”) and not interested in working anybody else, what a pity. 🙁 Another good opening to YO/LZ (LZ4TX pounding in with s9+++ for over an hour) but again no activity. Only South America heard was PS2T at max. 419 signal level Sunday evening for about 10 minutes. So at least managed to get a few other things around the shack done.

                    CQMM DX Contest - 2021

Call: DH8BQA

Class: SOSB/10 HP
QTH: JO73ce
Operating Time (hrs): 12

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Prefixes
----------------------
   10:  40       0
----------------------
Total:  40       0  Countries = 14  Total Score = 2,184

Club: Bavarian Contest Club

Comments:
FLEX-6600, Elecraft KPA500 @600W output, 6 ele OWA Yagi @60ft.

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

Another World Wide DX Contest in the books, this time Single Band on 15 m. Quite unhappy on Saturday. Couldn’t get much going, no good runs, best hour was 90 QSOs and that was not even running but search & pouncing! Band closed around 16z. A few signals popped up every now and then afterwards but all down in the noise, i.e. non-workable. A bit over 500 QSOs on day 1.

Sunday was a little better including some nice runs into North America in the afternoon but even that included my best hour was just 130 QSOs. The band stayed open an hour longer than on Saturday and it felt like condx were better, too.

Concerning the signal quality of certain stations: A picture is worth a thousand words.

I had purposely decided to go for 15 instead of 10 m. The latter would probably have been more interesting propagation-wise but I still had to earn the missing points for our BCC internal “Frequent Contester” program. Now I’ve got a good “reserve” of about a million points … 😉

                 CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW - 2020

Call: DH8BQA

Class: SO(A)SB15 HP
QTH: JO73ce
Operating Time (hrs): 21

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
   10: 1182    36      123          (incl. dupes)
------------------------------
Total: 1165    36      123          Total Score = 428,505

Club: Bavarian Contest Club

Comments:
FLEX-6600, PA + 6 ele G0KSC OWA Yagi @40ft