This weekend was the 2011 CQ WW RTTY ham radio contest and what a weekend it was! The band conditions were never this good since I got my license in 2007 and it was non-stop fun across the bands.

Though I usually post this at the end, here’s my score summary which will quickly show how good conditions were.

 Band    QSOs    Pts  DXCC Zone States
  3.5      48     58    5     4    23
    7     194    313   34     9    41
   14     256    570   61    19    40
   21     250    624   56    16    23
   28     214    523   49    16    15
Total     962   2088  205    64   142

Score : 858,168

I’ve never worked 10m into Europe on my 10m dipole but this weekend it was easier to work EU on 10m than on any other band. 10m was so quiet and you rarely had to send a repeat with stations getting your call on the first attempt. There were points on Sat and Sun when I had more Q’s on 10m than on the other bands. 10m was so quiet and strong I worked ever single station I could hear with the exception of one in the United Arab Emirates. I think that was the only station I heard I didn’t get in the log.

Here’s a map of just my 10m contacts (click to enlarge):

OJ0X in Market Reef was participating in the contest and I worked their DXpedition on 15m, 20m & 40m. I don’t think I worked any new entities beyond Market Reed though I worked many new entities on 10m.

On Saturday evening at 10:30pm I had matched the QSO count from the 2009 CQ WW RTTY contest which was the most Q’s I had logged in this contest. Since I had so many more multipliers than in 2009 with 10m being open, the same number of Q’s this year resulted in 60k+ increase in score. Sunday morning I worked 40m and then checked 10m and even early in the morning I was still copying lots of signals so it seems like 10m would be hot again and it was all day long.

Sunday I spent most of the time moving between 10, 15 & 20m with 20m and just having a blast. There were a few times when the op I worked sent a personal message (beyond something in their canned macro). One in particular was from John GW4SKA just after a QSO I had with OJ0X. Another notable was a nice comment from Randy K5ZD where we were each others last contact at the end of the contest.

Here’s a screen capture of all the contacts made this weekend (click to enlarge):

I’ll be putting together some stats over the next few days and create a new post with anything of interest. N1MM reports a total of 31.5 hours on the air out of the contest 48 hours  based on any off time > 30 mins. Thanks to all for the many contacts and a really fun filled ham radio weekend!

73,
K2DSL