Contest season is upon us: CQWW/ARRL SS
The ham radio contest season is now in full swing and I’ve logged my first CQWW SSB with the new tower/antennas. For those unfamiliar with the CQWW SSB (CQ Magazine’s World-wide Single Side Band (voice) 48 hour contest), the idea is to make as many contacts in a weekend generating a score that is a combination of the number of contacts multiplied by the number of “countries” and geographical zones. Same country contacts don’t count.
I was able to log 20hrs and mostly used the experience to identify some things to be improved in the station… lowband (80m and 160m) antennas, desk layout, new laptop setup, etc. I also wanted to see if I could pick up a few new countries towards my DXCC totals (by band/mode).
As I don’t have an amplifier, so it was a 100w effort. On Friday afternoon, the 160m inverted L was setup. It seemed to work OK, but was no world-beater. Low bands are tough without 1.5kw and/or really good antennas for tx/rx.
This weekend, I’m going to rework the 80m antenna (which didn’t work – most likely due to interaction with the tower). I hope to spend some time in the ARRL Sweepstakes CW (Morse code) contest starting Saturday.
Even though I haven’t been able to get on the air much lately (mostly due to work conflicts), at least the birds have been able to get some use out of my station.
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