Days 323 and 324 – The LZ DX contest

I’d planned in advance to make a bit of an effort in the LZ DX contest and so on the Saturday morning I attempted to re-route the coax that currently goes to the OCFD I have up and replace it with a mono band 40m dipole but unfortunately due to bad planning I wasn’t able to do that.  As a result I didn’t even attempt to work anyone on bands other than 10m, 15m and 20m during the contest.

Before the contest started on day #323 I worked RZ0SR, Igor and SG3U, Jörgen on 12m followed by 7Z7AA, Jabal on 10m.  I then finally got through the pileup to talk briefly with TY2BP, Pat in Benin on 10m for a welcome new DXCC entity.  After that I worked Tony, CT1/G0MBA again, this time managing a direct QSO rather than going via a repeater in a different continent!  I then had a quick chat with Kevin, G8MXV in Felixstowe on the same band.

The contest went fairly well for me, I managed to get a couple of good runs going on 10m and 15m and it was quite exhilarating to see that for a short while I kept a rate of 4 QSOs/minute going.  With just the three bands though, my entry was never going to be a serious one so I just had some fun.  This was the first time I’ve had a chance to use my new Acom 1000 amplifier properly and it was flawless.  I ran 25 watts input for 400 watts output and it never missed a beat.  I know that’s how it’s supposed to be but I’ve never owned a large valve amplifier before and my only experience of amplifiers is using fairly low powered (100w and 200w) solid state devices for VHF where they need a high drive level and get incredibly hot in the process.

As in previous contests, I’m not going to list all my QSOs but instead you can download the log in .csv format by clicking here.

Highlights for me were being called by two new DXCC on day #323 and each time I had no idea what the callsign prefixes were as I typed them into my logger.  I was called by 3B8CW, Clive on Mauritius and HP1DSD, Luis in Panama.  I was also very pleased to be called by VK7XX, John.  It’s the first time a VK has called me on SSB.

On day #324 I carried on and took my total up to around 220 QSOs in the contest and had a quick break half way through to work a special event callsign in India, AU2JCB, Datta.

I seem to have caught the map making bug recently and so I made a map of QSOs made during the LZ DX contest.  This isn’t a comprehensive map because not all stations have their location details on qrz.com but it’s a good representation.  Click for a much larger version.

Stations worked in the LZ DX contest

Stations worked in the LZ DX contest

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