With such good conditions on the upper bands I gave the new Hexbeam a pretty good workout. Running SOLP(A) my goal was to go for the mults, turning the N1MM ‘available mults’ window from green to red, then blue…then repeat on next best band. Great choices abounded during daytime on either 20, 15 or 10m! Allowed me to also better track beam’s effectiveness to various regions around the globe. Ran a little Sunday when mults thinned/rate slowed.
Was fun and relaxed, and I was quite pleased to break many pile-ups early by moving up or down just a bit from the spotted frequency, esp. on Sunday when competing vs. fewer big-guns. Sunday morning brought huge signals on 15m and I ran up my QSO total there. Agree with Jim KS1J that 10m propagation was very good but not quite the same as during CQWW SSB…BTW, *amazing* QSO totals for Jim again in this contest – 2000+ with, I assume, LP!
Heard K1DM snag 8Q7DV on Sunday, who was too weak with too big a pile to likely work here at the time. I did get more Africans in the log but was disappointed with the propagation to JA/SW Asia. Only 1 JA worked but 3 from KH2/KH0 – strange.
No big operating for ARRL 160m here this coming weekend. Will save time for the ARRL 10m event the following weekend…hope many from CTRI plan activity for that one.
What are the plans at W1AN/W1DX for ARRL 10m Contest John?
73, Bill W1WBB
CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW
Call: W1WBB
Operator(s): W1WBB
Station: W1WBB
Class: SOAB(A) LP
QTH: RI – USA
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Zones Countries
——————————
160: 19 7 10
80: 59 12 45
40: 214 19 75
20: 157 31 101
15: 163 26 109
10: 128 28 105
——————————
Total: 740 123 445 Total Score = 1,160,424
Club: CT RI Contest Group
Comments:
The new Hexbeam worked great on the high bands!
Strategy was to go DXing, using N1MM Logger ‘available mults’ to clear out
unworked zones and countries as best as possible, exercising patience as an LP
stn but knowing when to skip the major pile-ups for later. Then, repeat on
next band with highest available mult count. Great results on 10/15/20m,
working DXCC+ on each.
CQ’d a bit Sunday afternoon/eve when point/click rate was slow and few workable
‘available’ mults. Less than 10% of QSOs made running. Found a few good mults
late that were not posted while I searched in-between callsigns on bandmap
going ‘old-school’ – turning the dial!
Good fun with great participation from around the radio globe. Thanks for the
Q’s, and esp. to the many DXpeditions and big sig M-Op stns for getting on.
Log will be uploaded to LoTW.
Bill,
Nice job. It looks like we both had the same idea in this one. I was hoping to up my DXCC count on the bands. When the dust is settled, I should have much better numbers, especially on 10 and 15 which I rarely operate from home.
The 10-meter contest should be lots of fun!
Mike, K1DM