2003 ARRL 10 Meter Contest
12/16/2003 |
W4GAC
W4GAC St. Petersburg Amateur Radio Club.
The Ten Meter Contest is one of the events we run from the club station every year.
This year, we started off on Friday night. The band appeared closed, and we worked some local stations. Before giving up, we moved down to the CW end and heard some stuff just under the noise. We resurrected an old bencher audio filter, and after hooking it up, managed to work some barely audible South American stations. The band closed completely after that.
On Saturday, we opened up about 8:00 am local time and had a computer mini disaster. Our fine, venerable, dearly loved serial mouse decided to go from flakey to useless. It's pretty difficult trying to computer log without a mouse. I finally took the thing apart, and was able to move the wheels by hand, one direction at a time. This got us into the logging program, and back on the air. There was an opening to Europe on phone, which we exploited while it lasted. It was only there for about an hour. This single opening was the only time we were able to get into Europe all weekend, pretty much. The conditions on Saturday were pretty good. The signals were readable, a little weak, but no fading.
After Europe faded away, we switched back to CW. The conditions on code we ok, and we started knocking down the various states and provinces. The band stayed open until about 8:00 PM local time.
Sunday, we had a great deal of rain. That did not keep us off the air, but we got started around 9:00 AM local. Well the signal strengths were up Sunday across the board on both Phone and CW. The pattern we had on Saturday repeated, we worked more DX multipliers on phone than we did CW, and more states and provinces on CW than we did on phone.
By the end of the contest, which came about 6:00 pm our time, as the band just shut down abruptly, we had good balance on our results. A few more CW contacts than phone and a few more multipliers on phone than CW. It's especially helpful to work mixed modes when the conditions are not optimal.
Participating operators were: WA4EEZ, KC4SXO, N4GD, N4RI, and myself, KU4BT. We also had quite a few visitors, hams and non hams.
Special mention to NP3R for killing the mouse. (We got a new one from .......Radio Shack.) -- KU4BT
The Ten Meter Contest is one of the events we run from the club station every year.
This year, we started off on Friday night. The band appeared closed, and we worked some local stations. Before giving up, we moved down to the CW end and heard some stuff just under the noise. We resurrected an old bencher audio filter, and after hooking it up, managed to work some barely audible South American stations. The band closed completely after that.
On Saturday, we opened up about 8:00 am local time and had a computer mini disaster. Our fine, venerable, dearly loved serial mouse decided to go from flakey to useless. It's pretty difficult trying to computer log without a mouse. I finally took the thing apart, and was able to move the wheels by hand, one direction at a time. This got us into the logging program, and back on the air. There was an opening to Europe on phone, which we exploited while it lasted. It was only there for about an hour. This single opening was the only time we were able to get into Europe all weekend, pretty much. The conditions on Saturday were pretty good. The signals were readable, a little weak, but no fading.
After Europe faded away, we switched back to CW. The conditions on code we ok, and we started knocking down the various states and provinces. The band stayed open until about 8:00 PM local time.
Sunday, we had a great deal of rain. That did not keep us off the air, but we got started around 9:00 AM local. Well the signal strengths were up Sunday across the board on both Phone and CW. The pattern we had on Saturday repeated, we worked more DX multipliers on phone than we did CW, and more states and provinces on CW than we did on phone.
By the end of the contest, which came about 6:00 pm our time, as the band just shut down abruptly, we had good balance on our results. A few more CW contacts than phone and a few more multipliers on phone than CW. It's especially helpful to work mixed modes when the conditions are not optimal.
Participating operators were: WA4EEZ, KC4SXO, N4GD, N4RI, and myself, KU4BT. We also had quite a few visitors, hams and non hams.
Special mention to NP3R for killing the mouse. (We got a new one from .......Radio Shack.) -- KU4BT
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