[Elecraft] re: Elecraft Wallpaper

Wed Dec 17 06:15:01 2003

K6III wrote:

>Well, another HF contest is out of the way. The ARRL 10m was run
>this past weekend. It was a tough one as the propagation gods were
>not smiling on us.

>How'd you do? I hope you are working towards either (or both) of the
>Operator Achievement Awards offered by Elecraft.  These HF contests 
>are good opportunities to gather those U.S. States and some DX, too. 

>Did you add to you list? 

There has been very little mention of last weekend's 10m contest on 
here. Anyway I was on. 10m was especially hard going here in Europe 
on QRP, and in contrast to last year I only managed 11 states and 28 
countries with absolutely nothing new and the majority very 
commonplace. 147QSOs and a claimed score of 22,932. Compare that with 
last year when I had 348 QSOs, 40 states, 46 countries and 119,712 
points. Yes it was hard going this year! The only satisfaction was 
beating the 1994 QRP record of 800 points within my first hour, a 
sign that next year will be even tougher.

Used my K2 at 5W into a 3/4 wave vertical groundplane (same as last 
year).

The contest seemed to show very strange propagation at times, and it 
was very localised (ie nothing but EA stations at one time) as if 
most of it was sporadic E. We had a surprise opening to Eastern 
Europe on Saturday evening lasting up to five hours after sunset when 
the band by all intents should be totally dead! Most of the USA 
stations I worked were in Florida and not a single VE worked (VO1MP 
was the only one even heard). Strange band.

73 Dave G3YMC

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