The Weekend Round-Up

What a great weekend on the bands! The ARRL International SSB Contest certainly brought hams out of the woodwork and on the air.

When I looked at the SFI numbers on Thursday to see what was going on, I thought we would all be twiddling our thumbs on Saturday and Sunday, but instead it turned around and the conditions where pretty good after all.

40m didn’t make me smile very much; I only managed to make a total of four contacts on that band all weekend long. I was hearing lots of stations, the problem was nobody was calling “CQ Contest”, and nobody was answering my CQ calls either. Both 20m and 15m sort of got left behind in the rush that was 10m. I made 31 contacts on 20m, 30 contacts on 15m, and 261 contacts on 10m.

Furthest contact of the weekend was with JA2AXB in Shizuoko City, Japan on 10m.

The Band Police must have taken the weekend off as I didn’t hear any of them about all weekend. However, there is one gentleman, and I really do use that term loosely, who spent a couple of hours Saturday afternoon jamming contesters on 14.235. Apparently it was his personal frequency and he objected most strongly to anyone who got close. His foul mouth and racist rants had to be heard to be believed. I hope somebody caught his callsign and managed to tape him so the FCC can also hear him. He certainly doesn’t deserve to be a ham with his attitude.

Let’s all hope the last weekend of the month is just as good for the CQ WW WPX SSB Contest.