02/21/2008 | KX9X As the ARRL Contest Branch Manager, I obviously enjoy operating contests. I live in an apartment five minutes from HQ, so I have access to the ARRL Employees club station W1HQ for serious operating.

However, there's just nothing to substitute for being able to operate from your own home, so I've joined many other "antenna challenged" Amateurs and set up a "stealth" station in my second-floor apartment. I run 5 watts to a homebrew indoor horizontal loop I made by wrapping a wire at the top of my walls around the perimeter of my apartment, and use CW exclusively. Since moving to CT in October 2007, I've worked 13 DXCC countries from my home QTH, so the DX CW Contest seemed a great way to test my QRP station's abilities.

I was pleasantly surprised. In 10 hours of casual operating (mostly on Sunday), I made 70 QSOs in 31 different countries. Best DX was working the Ducie Island DXpedition VP6DX on 20m Saturday morning. While I'm not going to win any awards, I hope this demonstrates to hams living in a condo or an apartment that you CAN work DX from an apartment QTH, even if you're only running QRP and modest antennas. Adjust your expectations accordingly and you will have a LOT of fun!

Sean Kutzko, ARRL Contest Branch Manager -- KX9X