This past weekend I took part in the ARRL International DX CW Contest. I had made a few contacts during larger CW contests before, and occasionally operate in some of the weekly activity hour-long contests, but never put in enough of an effort to submit a log.
For this one, I didn’t make a contact until the contest had been going on for 18 hours already, but spent some time Saturday and Sunday afternoon making contacts.
175 contacts and 101 multipliers gave me a little over 53000 points. I contest just for enjoyment, so score matters little, especially since big contest stations probably make a couple thousand contacts. I made contacts on 40-10 meters, and used only 100 watts. For this year, there was a new category called “Limited Antenna Overlay” which includes multiband verticals like my DX Commander.
Making that many contacts, I decided to submit my log. The methods I used for this contest are probably worth a club presentation, so I just might put that together. Hint – mad CW skills not required.
