It is that time of year again, Christmas Lights, Holiday Music, early dark evenings, frigid temperatures, and of course, the 160M Contest.
My plan this year was to make a larger effort, but due to other activities, was only able to dedicate about 3.5 hours to the contest on Saturday evening. I decided to dedicate the time running stations, with a sprinkling of hunting stations. In years past, I have worked more sections bouncing around the band, but with my limited bandwidth with my antenna, it is difficult to do this. I parked myself around 1.814 Mhz where my antenna is resonant. I can go from 1.8 to 1.835 with a tuner, outside of that range the tuner throws a fit!
I worked as far west as Oregon, Arizona, and Colorado, but most of my contacts were east coast and to the south. This is expected as my antenna is very much a compromise antenna and up only about 35 feet. But with this antenna, I can at least get out to the west coast!
At one time, I was going at a really good clip and got rates up to 102 contacts per 20 minutes. The exchange is pretty easy (N8XE 5NN OH) so it is easy to get a good rate going. When my rates began to settle around 30, and I was getting tired, I decided to call it about midnight. 213 contacts with a score of 18,318. Not bad for 3.5 hours of effort and I won’t be winning any awards, but it was fun to be on top band. The nice thing about this contest is that it is relaxing and you don’t have to work too hard.
Next is the 10M contest!
