This year’s CQ WPX was on the the last weekend of March like every year. I participate it but since I had little time so not to the full time. I chose the category Single Operator – Low power, Non Assisted and the subcategory Overlay Classic.
Single Operator means that I broadcast all the time alone, Low Power that my output power does not exceed 100W, Non Assisted that I did not use DX clusters or other assistance services for monitoring and searching stations on the band and finally mentioned Overlay subcategory Classic that my time (so-called On time) does not exceed 24h of the total duration of the 48h. On time means a time when I am not Off time and Off time is every minute I have not logged any QSO to log, however, at least 1h after the last record is considered to be Off time.
QSOs with any hamradio station are very short and consist of well-defined parameters that they must contain. It is a call sign received and transmitted report, which consists of a standard 59 and for this particular race still from the serial number (starting with 001). For a successfully recognised connection, it is therefore necessary to provide these data in the same way as those indicated by the counter-station, which is then checked in the evaluation.
As I wrote before because I didn’t have enough time I chose the Classic subcategory but after the contest finish I didn’t even take the aforementioned max 24h on time but just a little more than 18h. I logged into my favorite N1MM+ contest logger from an author with the same call sign.
The propagation was wonderfool this year and during the contest I even supplemented my DXCC collection with a few new countries. Compared to previous years (as far as my location is concerned) the Far East (Japan, Indonesia, China, Thailand, Singapore) also flew well south America (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia) and North America (USA, Canada, Puerto Rico). Since I personally have difficult terrain in many directions (high elevations to the west, south, and north) I was very grateful for the QSO with USA from the Colorado area, which is currently the westernmost part of the U.S. that I managed to do, I was also pleasantly surprised by the connections from Japan, Thailand and Singapore. I was also pleased not to be technically demanding 9its local europe QTH but for me a rare connection (the new DXCC) from San Marino. I finally finished the contest after 18h and 36m with 468 QSO. I worked on bands 160m 80m 40m 20m 15m and 10m so all the bands was opened, including the 10m where I made only 10 QSOs but there were also Brazil and Cape Verde too. From my point of view, it was a very good contest and I believe that if I had participated in fulltime it would have definitely climbed to a mythical thousands QSOs.
I am already looking forward to the next contest of this type when the HF band comes to life and one will experience many interesting QSOs.
73! de OM4IK
