I’m not a big contester, but I do like QSO parties, and yesterday, the Michigan QSO Party was held. It ran from noon EDT (1600Z) to midnight (0400Z). Here are my notes on the contest:
- A couple of months ago, I came up with the idea of activating one of the less-populated counties, say Arenac or Iosco. I’d find a cottage where I could put up my GOTA station antenna, which is a 20-meter/40-meter fan dipole, and maybe even add some 80-meter elements to it. I was even going to invite some of our club members to join me. All this quarantine stuff quashed those plans.
- Our club sometimes uses the Michigan QSO Party as training for operating Field Day. That, of course, was out this year.
- I originally thought I’d operate the entire contest, and I started right at noon, but I ran out of steam after two hours, so at that point, I took a long break.
- I tried 20 meters at first, but only made eight contacts in the first 40 minutes, so I gave up and moved to 40 meters. Three of those contacts were DX contacts, though, so that was kind of nice.
- The antenna I was using on 20 meters was my Cobra antenna, which is the only HF antenna that’s up in the air right now. It’s definitely not the best antenna for contesting. Now that the bands seem to be picking up, maybe I’ll get serious about putting up a hex beam this summer.
- I didn’t get back on the air until after dinner, about 6:30 pm. I did pretty good on 40m, and I even worked some phone. The nice thing about using the Flex 6400 is that you can easily see on the panadapter where to set up without causing any interference to nearby stations. I haven’t made many phone contacts with the Flex since I’ve had it, so I’m still tweaking the settings, but it seemed to work well in the contest.
- The only microphone that I have for the Flex is the hand mic included with the rig. This is not a good way to contest. I had to hold the mic while calling CQ, then put it down and type in a call sign when someone replied.
- Not really being a phone guy, I did not think about setting up a “voice keyer,” that is a recording to call CQ. That would have been handy, as it got to be kind of a pain having to call CQ over and over. I just did a little Googling, and come to find out that the Flex doesn’t have this feature, at least not natively. There is a workaround, though. I’m going to have to look into this before Field Day.
- I quit again just after 8pm, with a total of 100 contacts and just over 8,000 points. I came upstairs and watched two episodes of the new season of Bosch with my wife, Silvia.
- I hadn’t intended on getting back on the air, but we finished watching TV about 10:40, so it was still early. I checked my email, but that didn’t take long, so I decided to head back downstairs just before 11:00 pm to work the last hour of the contest.
- I made a couple of search and pounce QSOs, but then QSYed to 80m just a little after 11:00. This last hour was really a lot of fun. The band was in pretty good shape, and I made 40 more contacts before the contest ended, including, finally, some Michigan counties. My final score for 142 contacts, 55 multipliers, and a total of 15,180 points.
- A final amusing tidbit is that there was only one station that I worked on all three bands: OM2VL! I was really surprised that he could hear me on 80 meters. My Cobra is kind of low for 80m, and only once previously have I worked a European on 80m.
So, that’s all for this year. Here’s looking towards a better 2021.