The ARRL DX Contest SSB is great fun. I like to discover what exotic locations I’ve contacted.
I downloaded from LOTW to QRZ – I thought this contact was pretty cool. My first Galapagos Islands contact.
Any of the rest of you folks – What was your favorite contact?
73 Glenn
I was racking up the contacts in the recent ARRL DX Contest SSB at the Oak Bay Marina. Conditions were pretty darn good. I was pumped. Twenty-five contacts on 10m was my goal. Here’s proof that I’m not prevaricating. My Kenwood 480 transceiver can be seen just beyond my laptop.
Two local amateurs (living about 150 yards away) decided to drop by… and interrupt me. Arghhhh! These guys (Andy VE7PT and Roger VE7AP) are great friends and we had delightful face-to-face QSOs; but why weren’t they chained to their radios!? I was missing contacts in Spain, the Bahamas, Japan…. Arghhhh!!! Again!
To compound my agony, I was working one of the many Brazilian stations, this one around 28.315 MHz when my booming 50 watt signal was flattened by Jim VE7ZO up in Bowser! About 150 kms away. I couldn’t believe it.
Clearly it was all a case of SSB interruptus.
73 Glenn VA7HC
(And yes, I made my 25 contacts LOL)
I participated (for a total of 45 minutes) in the CQ 160 meter SSB contest on Friday and Saturday evenings. 160 is a real struggle for my short vertical and under-sized radials (probably way less than 1% antenna efficiency on 160), but I was encourage by my results in the CW version of the contest, so thought I would give it a try. SSB signals need a LOT more bandwidth (over 50 times) than CW, so the resultant increase in broadband noise at the receiving end severely limited my efforts! I could work some (but not all) signals who were a true 59+, but no one else could hear me. All my contacts were with US stations: I could hear VA7MM quite well, but he couldn’t hear me! My furthest DX was Idaho and Colorado (they must have had a low noise level there).
I posted my meager results (10 contacts, 350 points) on 3830 and gave credit to IHF. At least I wasn’t last!
73
Roger
VE7AP