Take a leap of faith and visit 10 meters some time this weekend.
Last year t there was activity (outside local) during most of the daylight hours, including propagation to PY and LU. In CQ-WW a few weeks back, I worked V5 and 6W with my 100 watts to a wire.
Period: 7pm local Fri–7pm Sunday
Modes: CW, SSB, mixed
Exchange: RST + state. DX will send RST + SN.
Mults: Per mode, SPC + countries + (unique to this contest) Mexican states
Scoring: 2 pts per qso SSB, 4 pts CW
As accurately predicted there was indeed Trans-Equatorial propagation on both Saturday and Sunday around 1pm each day which allowed DX contacts with several countries in South America. On Sunday I made one multi-hop QSO with Portugal. The E skip was plentiful within North America, and of course there was plenty of Ground Wave as well. I wasn’t able to get further West than the Midwest US, but within that range signals were generally good but with the QSB you get with E skip. I was told by an operator I worked that there was some Meteor Scatter on Friday Night, but I didn’t make it out back to my shack until Saturday morning and waited to operate until after I was able to stoke up a good fire in my shack’s woodstove.
According to my log I ended up with 20,172 points for the club as Single Op, Unassisted, Mixed Mode, High Power. That consisted of 172 QSOs total, 77/95 on CW/SSB, with 4/3 DX mults and 21/13 North America mults. I didn’t encounter ANY F8 or F4 operation/interference at all, and on CW everyone was spaced so far apart that my wide (1000 Hz) and medium (500 Hz) filters were all that I used on CW – unlike on 160m last weekend where I needed to always use my narrow filter (250 Hz) – between all of the tightly packed stations and digital interference.
The highlight for me was when I was calling CQ on SSB and a station from Georgia called me and said: “I’m not really in the contest but I wanted to find out what exactly you are running in Rhode Island because on my SDR Band Scope Waterfall Display you are by far the strongest signal on the band, at least 30 dB stronger than everyone else.” I replied just a 3 element beam up 20 meters high and 1 KW, but that he was also very strong and I thought we had a pipeline between us. In summary, you can still have fun on 10m, even at the rock bottom of the solar cycle. 73, Chris WB2VVV
Barely an hour and a half spent this weekend. However, here is my contribution to the Clubs score. 73 Ken K3IU
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Station: K3IU
Class: SO CW HP
QTH: RI
Operating Time (hrs): 1.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
——————-
CW: 58 22
SSB: 0 0
——————-
Total: 58 22 Total Score = 5,104
Club: CT RI Contest Group
K1SX
SO LP CW
29-11-0–1276
About 2 hours, here and there
Genesis SDR, homebrew SSPA, 66′ doublet at 50′.
Bleah. This was not the year for a wire antenna, in spite of having 100w instead of qrp. To compensate however, I spent a couple hours Saturday mid-day at N1RR running on the 7 el at 115 feet. I’m not sure what kind of propagation we were tapping into, but it pulled plenty of faint 4’s out and I made around 100 q’s. That was good fun, but back home, it was MS bursts or very flaky Es, with few opportunities for me to get outside NE, and many of those q’s lost. The few SA stations could not hear me. Some CTRI members wkd or heard in there: W1AN, WB2VVV, K3IU. Nice efforts Ken & Chris! Well, after all, we are at the cycle minimum–aren’t we? 73–Dave K1SX
ARRL 10-Meter Contest – 2019
Call: W1AN
Operator(s): W1AN
Station: W1AN
Class: SO CW Unlimited HP
QTH: CT
Operating Time (hrs): 4.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
——————-
CW: 213 29
SSB:
——————-
Total: 213 29 Total Score = 24,708
Club: CTRI Contest Group
Comments:
I was active Saturday and Sunday for a couple hours each day. Propagation limited, but there was some sporadic E and scatter with little 2Way results. Heard a WA station calling momentarily. Many contacts in a pipeline to LU, CX both days.Midwest and SW. Could use some sunspots. WB2VVV, K3IU, K1SX worked.
73, John W1AN.