I wasn’t able to spend a lot of time on the radio this weekend in the ARRL DX CW contest, but for the time I was on it was a lot of fun. Compared to the 2010 ARRL DX CW contest, I made a lot fewer contacts but that is because I was on the air much less.

I didn’t spend any time on 80m as I wasn’t around the radio at the times when 80m was worth tuning up so all my contacts are between 40m and 10m. Last year there at this time and for this contest the atmospheric conditions peaked and the same occurred this year. I hope the conditions remain favorable as it is the first time since I’ve been licensed that the conditions have been this good.

My score summary shows there wasn’t a lot of activity, but in the short time, I was able to log 39 contacts on 10m with the highlight being a 8000 mile 10m contact with ZS6RJ in South Africa. That is my longest 10m contact so far. Below is a map of all contacts followed by a map of just the 10m contacts.

Conditions during the day were fairly good though I felt 20m and 15m still had a fair amount of noise on them. I worked more contacts in the early to mid morning east coast time as that was when I was able to spend time on the radio. Sunday late in the day near the end of the contest, 40m was terrific with very little noise an strong signals coming from Europe. In the last 45 or so mins of the contest I was able to work about 30 contacts on 40m without any trouble including 4U1ITU that I worked for the first time.

Kudos to AY9F who sent his power as 5 watts. Great signal! I like the stations that send NN (99) as their power vs 100 or ATT. Maybe that will catch on for future contests. I worked 5 stations on the 4 bands I operated and 16 more on 3 bands. Of the 266 contacts made there were 190 unique stations logged. It looks like 72 different DXCCs worked with Brazil leading the way with 20 Qs followed by Italy with 13 and Germany with 12. I worked 18 different zones across all the bands and 8 different zones on 10m.

Map of all contacts in the 2011 ARRL DX CW contest (click for larger view):

Map of 10m contacts in the 2011 ARRL DX CW contest (click for larger view):

Map of 40m contacts in the 2011 ARRL DX CW contest (click for larger view):

Here’s the score summary for the weekend:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Cty
    7      55    165   33
   14     118    354   59
   21      54    162   34
   28      39    117   25
Total     266    798  151

Score : 120,498

73 & good Dx!
K2DSL