From: MW0BRO Martin
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 14:16:25 GMT
First time entry in this contest. I much prefer the high Q rate contests but thoughtI’d give this a go to see how well my small station performed.
I managed only 5.5 hours at the radio due to family commitments.
Station:
Icom 7300
100W
DX Commander multi-band wire vertical
80m doublet, balanced fed
This DX Commander antenna is quite good. 1/4 vertical elements for 40m, 20m & 10m and the 40m element working as 5/8 on 15m. All resonant, no tuning after band change.
Plenty of VEs in the log at the start on 20m, some 9H and one Caribbean.
Later on in the afternoon I bagged 9V1YC, 3B8XF and my first VK(6LW) on 20m with several more VKs following on 40M later in the afternoon. I also managed 9J2BO who was operating very casually and informally before 20m closed.
Plenty more VEs on 40m into the evening as well as a few G_6XX stations on 40m & 80m.I managed all of them except G6XX and GI6XX. Finished at 23:25 and an hour the following morning bagged me a nice few more VKs as well as a couple of ZLs along with the Cayman Islands and Belize.
All in all, I’m quite happy that I was able to work so many of the DX stations even with low signals and, like many others, several attempts at the exchange.
I learned a lot about the 7300 with regards to the PBT, filters and notch filter, critical to bagging the exchanges and logging the QSOs of the weak signals.
Nothing heard on 10/15m at all.
Hard going on 100w and a wire but still good fun for a few hours over the weekend.
Band QSOs Pts Cty Sec Pt/Q
3.5 12 280 0 0 23.3
7 39 855 0 0 21.9
14 19 415 0 0 21.8
Total 70 1550 0 0 22.1
Score: 1,550
73
Martin
MW0BRO