02/17/2003 | WS1L It had been a long time away from ham radio. No QSO's in the log from 1995 to 2001 while I finished a graduate degree and got promoted at work. The summer of 2002 saw me dusting off the old rigs, and by the fall I was looking for a way to get my CW speed back. November SS did that. When I saw the International DX Contest on my calendar, I figured I would operate between other commitments, maybe enjoy a few CW contacts.

A week or so prior to the contest I downloaded and installed CT, and a day before entered a few test contacts to try it out. My keying interface for TRX-Manager worked for the keying, although not for the rig on the same Com port.

Friday night I was out until almost 9PM, so I got in about an hour or so of operating. Twenty was open, but not great. My CT skills were rusty, and I was feeling my way along. Saturday morning was time to try twenty, then fifteen, then ten. The 3 element yagi at 11 meters brought in plenty of stations, and the Timewave DSP9+ made it possible to listen to one at a time. Saturday afternoon was busy with other chores, then Saturday night was time for forty meters. The vertical seemed to perform about as well as the 160 dipole with balanced feeders. Sunday morning was again time for the higher bands and by Sunday night I had managed 8 or so hours of operating, mostly in one hour chunks.

So, before I knew it the contest was over. 240 QSO's, 64 different DXCC entities, 91k points. It was a blast!!

Highlight - Working XT, for an all-time new one on Saturday morning and JY on 40M on Sunday night.
Lowlight - Having the rotor freeze up after a month of mostly single digit temperatures at night, teens in the daytime.

I'm already looking forward to the next CW contest... -- WS1L