Well, ‘death by aurora’ is one way of putting it.
I wasn’t actually expecting to be on for this as a planned family trip over the weekend was in the diary. A change in plan to travel early Sunday morning instead, meant I could negotiate some shack time.
Not feeling well prepared, and with an intermittent fault somewhere in the 20m feeder, expectations were low. I didn’t see the K-index of 6 coming though! As someone said, I too thought there was an antenna issue when I switched on around 1045z and found 10 and 15 more or less empty. Saturday was an almighty struggle with shocking propagation, raspy signals fading in and out and expectations fell further. I plugged away on 10 and 15 for longer than was sensible, wary of going to 20m but the latter at least did work with no flicks of high SWR.
Its all been said already. It was even harder going than usual and I was deflated by the number of times I tuned on to Gs and even some southerly GMs, wondering if I would pick up another QSO, only to find I could not hear anything of who was being worked. There did seem to be a good turnout from VE7 – thanks guys – but the rest of the VE pickings were slim, I have never struggled so hard to work VK (only a few) but there were some excellent signals from ZL. I took a few breaks on Saturday and left some time for Sunday am but our close down was brought forward so I had to pull the switch at 07z with a couple of hours left.
I ‘think’ my 80m QSO with ZL6HQ at his SR Saturday evening was OK; ZL3VZ was decent on Sunday. VK6 was loud on 80 and 40 but the others were few and difficult. The VE time on 40 was also very challenging. Nice to hear at least a few African stations – thanks for making all the effort guys.
I always have periods during this contest where I question my sanity, but I think it is all about managing expectations. As Nick put it, there is something special about each call you get, because it WILL be DX and each one is a victory. I am not advocating inter-G working, though it would relieve the tedium. I was surprised however, how often I got called but UK SCCs……..really guys! Read the rules. Much harder is the inevitable ‘sri etc’ you send when other well meaning Gs call you. Of course they are confused – they are welcome callers for the HQ stations. It’s a dilemma.
10 hours QRV
BAND QSO DUP DXC HQ POINTS BONUS AVG
——————————————–
80 24 0 12 7 120 440 23.33
40 50 0 20 10 250 820 21.40
20 93 1 29 9 465 1200 17.90
15 24 1 15 3 120 480 25.00
10 9 0 6 2 45 180 25.00
——————————————–
TOTAL 200 2 82 31 1000 3120 20.60
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TOTAL SCORE : 4 120
73 Keith GM4YXI