2007 ARRL International DX Contest (Phone)
03/05/2007 |
KD5IKG
That was great fun!
My General ticket was issued on Friday. Surfed the ARRL site and found there was a contest on, spent some time listening around to hear the flow Saturday morning, looked up the rules, printed out the band plan, borrowed an MFJ Intellituner from a friend to tune a G5RV that had been up for years(unused) and a third hand Icom 706MkII.
A special thanks to Mike - K6AER that took time for a long QSO during the middle of the contest. He gave me some great advice on casual contesting and working through the frustration of being a weak signals vs the big guns. Made a few back-to-back 20 watt contact to the Carribean after that! Even learned I needed to scan the USA CW portions for the DX stations running splits. There were a lot of 59+20 stations could be heard parked in the Extra phone portion of the band, but out of my reach(for now).
I did not submit a big score as far as the contest goes, but it was a great score for a new General license with new USA HF band access. Had fun, put over 20 countries in the log book on both 20 an 15 meters, even talked to a few DX contacts that I had worked on 6 meters. I was still was able to keep the XYL happy by painting three rooms during the contest and made it to church on time (Definatively a casual contest weekend for me.
Thank to all those "Kilowatt" stations that were willing to work this weak station with an antenna strung in the wrong directions (East to West) for working Europe and Asia, A few stations did not get in the log book but it was not for THEIR lack of trying to work me.
73's de -- KD5IKG
My General ticket was issued on Friday. Surfed the ARRL site and found there was a contest on, spent some time listening around to hear the flow Saturday morning, looked up the rules, printed out the band plan, borrowed an MFJ Intellituner from a friend to tune a G5RV that had been up for years(unused) and a third hand Icom 706MkII.
A special thanks to Mike - K6AER that took time for a long QSO during the middle of the contest. He gave me some great advice on casual contesting and working through the frustration of being a weak signals vs the big guns. Made a few back-to-back 20 watt contact to the Carribean after that! Even learned I needed to scan the USA CW portions for the DX stations running splits. There were a lot of 59+20 stations could be heard parked in the Extra phone portion of the band, but out of my reach(for now).
I did not submit a big score as far as the contest goes, but it was a great score for a new General license with new USA HF band access. Had fun, put over 20 countries in the log book on both 20 an 15 meters, even talked to a few DX contacts that I had worked on 6 meters. I was still was able to keep the XYL happy by painting three rooms during the contest and made it to church on time (Definatively a casual contest weekend for me.
Thank to all those "Kilowatt" stations that were willing to work this weak station with an antenna strung in the wrong directions (East to West) for working Europe and Asia, A few stations did not get in the log book but it was not for THEIR lack of trying to work me.
73's de -- KD5IKG
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