Last weekend was the biggest SSB radio contest of the year, CQ WW and I decided to put in an entry. I expected things to be slow going because we’re pretty much still at the bottom of the solar cycle.
I was pleasantly surprised. Both 20m and 15m were full from bottom to top and even 10m was open. I didn’t try and keep a run frequency but instead worked my way through each band from bottom to top, trying to work everyone I heard. I didn’t manage that completely because as normal, there were stations with far larger mouths than ears and despite being S9+ and with nobody calling them, they didn’t hear me.
That was the minority though and I’m very happy to have worked over 530 stations throughout the weekend at an average rate of just over 40/hour. I think is pretty good going for a relatively small S&P station with just 100W.
It was the first proper airing of my new Short Contest Callsign, G9D and I’m very pleased to report that it’s a much nicer callsign to use than my old one as I found that quite difficult to get across in noisy conditions and on a busy band.
Once again, I was impressed at the filtering and selectivity of the Kenwood TS-590SG especially when I managed to work six stations who were all within 5.5kHz of each other and all quite strong signals.
I’ve submitted my entry for 15m only as that’s my favourite band and if you’re interested, you can see a complete breakdown of my log on my Contest Results page.
All in all, this was the most fun I’ve had in an SSB contest for years.