Monday 23 November 2015

Not quite a "Clean Sweep"......

Another contest is over, and what a weekend it was!!  Overall the bands were not in bad shape, and the propagation numbers stayed pretty stable for most of the weekend.  We started off with: SFI=121, SN=52, K Index=4 and the A Index=1, and ended up with pretty much the same.

No band police were heard at all, which is a nice change from the profane language and screams of "UP!! UP!! UP!!".  However, the "Tuner Upper" Lids were out in force again tuning up right over on-going QSO's.

It really was very nice having the second HF antenna ready for this contest, it meant I had 15m available.  However, it wasn't all smooth sailing this year.  For some reason both antennas gave me really bad RF in the shack on 80m.  All the other bands, on both antennas, were fine.  I've never had this happen before, so I'm not quite sure where to start looking for an answer.  I put extra beads on the coax, but they have done nothing at all.

Saturday afternoon was a feast of the west coast, and in short order I have all of the California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii sections in the log....all on 10m.   It wasn't until after dark and 40m came alive that I started getting the "close in" sections.  Sunday was a great day, all the bands seem to have been open, at least I made contacts on them all.  The workhorse band was 15m for me, it was open to just about everywhere.

I managed to get 76 Sections of the available 83, the missing ones I never heard at all, on any band.  Now the wait till December 19th, when the RAC Winter Contest is starts.  Hopefully the bands will behave for that contest as well.

2015 Sweepstakes Worked Sections Map

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