[ADXA] ARRL CW DX contest

[Dennis Schaefer]

I started out planning to cruise for some new band counters.   I also wanted to test my “guy wire sloping vertical” on 80 and my 160m inverted-L.   The 80m did very well, with 38 Q’s and good signals from Europe.  The 160m is effective and produced booming signals from down South but noise covered any EU.  it did let me work ZF5T, though, so I got them on 6 bands again.

Saturday morning blew my plans up, though.  I did some searching and pouncing on 10 and there were so many EU stations that my rate stayed between 120-150 per hour, and then I called CQ.   You’d have thought I was on Bouvet - the EU pileup was amazing.   I hadn’t intended a big effort, so I extracted myself during a lull and did other things until working a few JAs in the early evening.  After the 10:00 news, I did one run through 40 meters, and worked a few more on 80 and 160.

I slept until almost 7 on Sunday.  I worked a JA on 40 for the multiplier, and did one pass through 20 meters, then 15.  Then back to 10 for nonstop action for a couple of hours.   Late in the day,  I collected a few mults on 20.

The final score was 404,000, with over 600 Q’s, 424 of which were on 10 meters.  Including time spent chasing new band counters, messing with antennas, etc, I spent about 10 hours.  

Dennis/RZ