Here are unfortunately some disclaimers related to my participation on this years CQ WW SSB ham radio contest. Disclaimer #1 – Friday afternoon at work my wife called to tell me 1 of the ropes holding up my G5RV antenna broke and it was laying on the ground. Oh well, not great news, but the previous weekend I actually put up a 3 band (10m, 15m & 20m) dipole with K2ZB so I had something in the air. Disclaimer #2 – When I got home from work on Friday I got sick and remained sick (101.5+ temperature) throughout the weekend. I really only operated 2 short stints each on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the early afternoon.
Friday when I got home I went in the back yard to see what happened and one of the ropes holding one leg of the G5RV had broken. It was dark and cold so I decided to just leave things alone until the sun warmed things up on Saturday. But I wasn’t feeling right on Friday and stayed in bed all night not even turning on the radio. I woke up Saturday morning feeling better and grabbed some material to go work on the G5RV once it warmed up a bit. I worked about 60 minutes on 15m and 20m using the tri-band dipole before things warmed up enough. I was still feeling ok in the late morning when I went out and got the G5RV back up in the air which took about 2.5 hours to pull up some new ropes into the tree and then get the G5RV attached and back up where it belongs. I then operated for about 2.5 hours using the new tri-band dipole before feeling I needed to head back to bed. 15m was easier for me as the stations were spread out more without so many overlapping stations. I was even able to work a handful of 10m stations, all south of me and towards South America (see the picture below). In the early evening I came down, made 2 contacts on 40m and went back to bed.
Sunday wasn’t much better for me and I was still sick with a fever. I got on just after noon (1600z) for about 20 mins working a few stations on 20m before I went back to bed for 2 hours. I came back downstairs at 2:30pm (1830z) and was able to stay on the radio for another 2.5 hours. I started on 15m and worked a bunch of stations before switching to 10m and working 8 stations, again all in South America. I then went back to 15m and then to 20m where I worked most of the remaining stations I logged before calling it quits for the contest and heading back to bed.
I worked 1 new DXCC when I logged S79K on 20m just 5 mins before I was done. S79K is in Seychelles above Madagascar on the west coast of Africa. It was also my longest contact in the short time I was on the air. 148 Q’s, 23 different CQ Zones and 58 different DXCCs.
Below is my score summary and then maps of the contacts made (all bands and then by band). I’m disappointed I was sick but glad I was able to get on and even log a new one.
Band QSOs Pts Cty ZN 7 2 4 2 2 14 50 130 34 16 21 78 203 39 19 28 18 52 8 4 Total 148 389 83 41 Score : 48,236
Map of all the contacts made in this weekends CQ WW SSB contest (click to enlarge):
Map of the 20m contacts (click to enlarge):
Map of the 15m contacts (click to enlarge):
Map of the 10m contacts (click to enlarge):
73,
K2DSL