[SMCARA] ARRL International DX Contest (Phone)

[jpsmith@md.metrocast.net]

The more stations that buy big antennas, the less the need for me to fork out the money for one.100 watts and a wire.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless Phone

----- Reply message -----
From: petebutt at comfac.com
Date: Mon, Mar 7, 2011 12:57
Subject: [SMCARA] ARRL International DX Contest (Phone)
To: <smcara at mailman.qth.net>


Tom,

  Good show!  I haven't operated in any DX contests (ever) in all these
years but after seeing e-mails from you and Boz about 10 and 15 meters
being open, I thought I would turn on the radio this past weekend and
see what was going on.  Lo and behold, I found hundreds of stations
operating on two bands that normally are completely dead most of the
time (at least at my house).

  Due to other commitments this weekend, I only had a few hours to 'play'
radio but found that I could load my inverted vee antenna with my Drake
tuner pretty well on both 15 and 10.  I was running about 60 watts USB. 
Over the course of 6.5 hours spread across both Saturday and Sunday
(various times), I was able to work about 65 stations in 29 countries
(multiple repeats, especially to Italy, Germany, etc.)  That represents
27 new countries more than the two that I have ever worked before in 40+
years of hamming!  I just started at the bottom of each band and slowly
worked my way up calling anyone that seemed to have a good signal.  I
wasn't running much power and my dipole isn't anything like what most of
the foreign stations were running but they were listening (and responding)
to me with no problem... must have been the excellent band conditions.  It
was interesting to hear them give me a '59' signal report when I knew they
were not being truthful at all... there is no way possible for my pitiful
60 watt signal to be 5x9 in all those countries.  It must be some of the
mystique of DX contest operations.  The station with the most stations
trying to work him (biggest pileups) all day Sunday was ON4UN in Belgium
on 20 meters.  Where most of the DX stations only had just one or two
stations calling them at a time, ON4UN consistently had DOZENS of stations
calling him every time he let up on the microphone.  He got pretty
irritated at a lot of them for 'jumping the gun' when he was still giving
a report to other stations.  It took me over three hours of checking back
occasionally, but I finally worked him so I was happy.  I wonder why
everyone was calling him when there were a lot of other, more interesting
locations like Funchal, Madeira Island (near Portugal) that were calling
and no one was answering them at all???

  It was a lot of fun and I hope to get a few QSL cards out of it,
leveraging some of KG3BOZ's suggestions about sending and receiving QSL
cards that he shared with us at the recent club meeting.  I wasn't in it
to get points, etc., rather just to work some new countries.

  At 7 PM Sunday night, the bands went totally quiet in a matter of
seconds as the contest ended and then it was over.

  Fun stuff...and I've been missing all this for years!  Will have to get
more active in the future, especially when the bands get better as the
sunspot cycle upswing continues.

  Vr, Pete (WA3UMY)



-----Original Message-----
From: smcara-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:smcara-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On
Behalf Of Tom Shelton
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 11:51
To: SMCARA Reflector (E-mail)
Subject: [SMCARA] ARRL International DX Contest (Phone)

Hi All...

The contest is over...