03/11/2005 | K0HW Wow, a lot tougher than I had planed in this one. I made about 140 QSOs less than last year. I missed the first 5 1/2 hours due to another planned activity with the XYL. When I got started only 40, 80 and 160 were going strong. I heard OO4UN on 80/75 and tried calling but his rcv freq was 3839 and 3840 is a very active frequency at that time of night. After I called him a couple times
he never came back and I never heard John the rest of the contest. Saturday night was tough on the low bands with lots of QRN. About 1900Z Saturday my rotator quit turning clockwise so it ended up pointed NW. I climbed the tower to clean the connector on the TailTwister and it did not help. When I fix the rotator that connector is going to get removed and it will be hard wired.

I only worked one station on all 6 bands, PJ2T my contact # 210 at 0135Z Sunday.

It is really had to work the SE when the beam is NW but by using my wire antennas I was able to scratch out a quite a few.

It is hard to believe I have started to like the CW part if this contest better than the SSB one. I could not get any answers when I tried to call CQ. It was hard enough to find a clear frequency to use and I only had two stations call me in over an hour of calling. It was great to find 10 meters open at times but no EU or JA heard there.

I would like to have found YI9VCQ - Korey in Iraq. He is in the same location as my Son - Martin and is helping get my Son more
interested in Ham Radio. I linked my Son up with Korey after finding
his Soapbox comments and pictures in the ARRL DX CW Soapbox.

ICOM 756PROII, Writelog, TH11DX, Dipoles and a 1440' Horizontial loop about 25' high. -- K0HW