The ARRL International DX Contest is one I enjoy doing every year, to me it's the start of the contesting year. Clearly, while the bands where not exactly in top form this year, we are I believe, out of the bottom of cycle 24 and coming up into cycle 25.
And yes, the "Lids" and "tuner uppers" where out in force all weekend doing what they do best.
40m was hopping on Friday night with wall-to-wall signals. 80m was busy with contest signals in-between the constant "let's talk about our medical issues" nets.....you know the type, they use 1500w to talk across town about their hemorrhoid problems, all the while splattering 15 kc either side of their signal!
Still, I managed to put 8 stations from the EU in the log as well as the UK and Northern Ireland on 80m, something that hasn't happened here in a number of years.
Friday night the propagation numbers were: SFI=69, SN=0, A Index=7, and the A Index=0 at 0130 UTC.
Saturday morning 15m opened into South America and the Caribbean. I managed to work most of the islands and all of South America with the exception of Bolivia. I have never managed to work Bolivia, but I guess there are not too many hams there.
We also saw a very short opening on 10m as well, and I managed to put Brazil and Argentina in the log before the opening disappeared.
The Saturday propagation numbers were: SFI=69, SN=0, A Index=4, and the A Index=2 at 1533 UTC.
Both of my antennas worked as advertised. The 35.5' wire vertical did very well on 15m and allowed me to work that band without any issues. I will have to add a few more radials in the spring though. The 80m OCF Dipole, now that it has been raised another 20' (it sits at 50' above the ground), also worked extremely well, and surprisingly also now works on 15m, something it has never done before. I wonder if the new height has something to do with that?
Most of Saturday was spent working 15m with the odd expedition to 20m and 10m. I found 20m to be an absolute zoo with multiple stations micro-kc's apart from one end of the band to the other. I worked the loudest signals and went back to 15m.
The Sunday propagation numbers were: SFI=70, SN=0, A Index=4, and the A Index=2 at 1100 UTC.
I had no intention of even trying to score millions this weekend as I wasn't sure how well the antennas would perform, so Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, only at a slower pace. I went from band to band and worked the loudest signals, and looking for those few I don't already have in my log book.
There was some very deep QSB on the bands on Sunday, nothing we couldn't deal with if you took your time and had some patience.
I shut down early with 100 contacts and 49 countries in the log. Overall it was a very good weekend. I had a lot of fun and plan on doing it all over again for the CQ WW WPX Contest at the end of the month.
