Today, I took part in two contests. Actually, I’m still working one of them.
The first contest was the FISTS Fall Sprint. To be able to work this contest, I needed to retune the Slinky dipole to 40m. tAfter playing with that for about a half hour, I went downstairs, hooked it up to the rig, and tuned around for a QSO to test it out. What I found was the PA QSO Party, so just before the FIST Sprint got started, I made a few QSOs in the PA QSO Party.
At 1700 UTC, the Sprint started. I got out of the gate pretty well, but then after about 45 minutes, it slowed way down, and I had to really work to make contacts, even though I was able to camp on a frequency. I guess all the guys who just showed up for a short time had enough and QRTed.
The next two hours things were relatively slow, but steady. At this point, I really should have QSYed to 20m or even higher, but, of course, I really don’t have an antenna for those bands. I gotta get that Gap Titan up real soon now. :)
At about 1900 UTC, I started getting a little thirsty. I had meant to bring down my bottle of Gatorade, but in my haste to get set up, I forgot it. I kept telling myself to go get something to drink, but every time I’d decide to do it, I’d get a call and make a QSO. When the clock hit 2000 UTC, I just told myself I’d have to tough it out.
After 2000 UTC, things picked up again. Although not as busy as when the Sprint started, it was decent. I made a bunch of contacts, then was able to actually camp out on 7.058. I couldn’t believe my luck, but as soon as I changed frequency, it slowed way down again. I called and called, but made few contacts on what I thought would be a “golden” frequency.
It was so bad, I only made one contact in the last ten minutes. I thought about changing frequencies, but I didn’t want to give up such a “good” frequency. I really have no idea why no one came back to me.
All in all, I did pretty well. 322 QSO points x 20 multipliers for a score of 6,440. I probably would have done better if I could have worked 20m for a while, although I’m not sure how band conditions were on 20.
PA QP
After working the FIST Sprint, I tuned down the band (~7.040) to see what was happening with thePA QSO Party. Things were going gangbusters, and I worked a few guys just for the fun of it. After racking up 5 QSOs, I went upstairs to have some dinner. Now, I’m back down here again, and will probably try to work a few more PA stations.
The PA QSO Party seems to be a very popular contest. There are many stations on and many out-of-state stations seem to be calling CQ as well as the PA guys. Some of the stations I worked have some very impressive QSO counts. K3ONW, for example, gave me a serial number of 661; N3SD 530.
Oh, well, Back to it….
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