2013 ARRL Sweepstakes

Yet another great weekend on the bands!  It was the perfect storm.....the wife is away on a 10 day cruise - so she can't bother me, and the propagation Gods were smiling on us.  You couldn't ask for better!

After looking at the numbers I decided to do this contest as a QRP station, and I'm glad I did....I don't think I've ever had such a good result in a contest.  The IC-703 was brought off the shelf and hooked up to power and coax and away we went.

I took it fairly easy, giving myself plenty of time off the air for breaks, and you can only submit the first 24 hours of the log anyway, so there was no need to kill yourself and go crazy.  I ended up working 63 out of the 83 ARRL and RAC Sections.  Not too shabby for a screaming 5w.

10m was wide open for most of the contest, as was 15m.  I ended up working stations on 10, 15, 20, 40 and 80m at one time or another, but 10 and 15m were my "go to" bands during the day.  I didn't get onto 20m until late Sunday afternoon as the runs on 10 and 15 were just so good!

I heard no LIDS and no band police this contest, but it was such a friendly atmosphere there was no need for them to hang around and try and make us miserable.  It was also very nice to be hunted, apparently Ontario East (ONE) is very much sought after.  I guess there are not many contesters in this Section.  One other point did stick out, and that was the number of YL's on the air.  I can't remember hearing as many on the air as I did over this weekend before.

Many thanks must go to the great operators who took the time to work me, it must have been difficult at times for them I'm sure. 


The worked Sections from my contest logger