Didn’t have any other plans for Saturday so I was able to work the NAQP SSB ham radio contest.  A single op can work 10 of the 12 hours and max power of 100w – not a problem for me as that’s my max.

Bands seemed noisy most of the day. We got 5-6″ of snow overnight and throughout the morning so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. I shoveled the driveway twice before the contest started and used the contest as an excuse to not shovel any more. I started on 15m & 10m and it was a bit slow going and a bit noisy across all the bands throughout the contest.  I spent 100% of the contest working S&P and bouncing between all the bands (10m – 80m). I just didn’t feel that I’d be as productive calling CQ, even on the lower bands in the evening.

I did enjoy hearing one op give his name as IDIOT for his exchange. Around 0000z I started to hear some closer states on 20m that were much louder than normal. I recall RI, MA and MD sounding extremely loud on 20m around that time and it seemed odd not just for me but the other ops as well. I also worked the HK0NA Dxpedition. They were operating on 15m SSB split and took a shot working them after they had been on 15m for a long time. Got real lucky and came back to me on my first attempt. Better lucky then good. I also worked them on 20m RTTY Sunday morning.

I had passed my 2010 NAQP SSB score when I hit 242 Qs this year vs 347 Qs in 2010 because of I had 121 mults in the 242 Qs vs 87 mults in the 347 Qs. I ended up with a total of  287 Qs and 135 mults which is almost 1 mult for every 2 contacts which is pretty good. I didn’t log the usual tougher states (NE, WV, MS though CT and ME weren’t logged this time either). What is also odd is I didn’t log a Quebec contact on any band. Normally they are a dime a dozen.

Here’s my score summary:

 Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec   DX
  3.5      63     63   28    1
    7      57     57   28    0
   14      91     91   36    1
   21      47     47   26    1
   28      29     29   14    0
Total     287    287  132    3

Score : 38,745

Here’s a map of the contacts made using http://levinecentral.com/adif2map (click for a larger view):

Very friendly contest and speaking with the ops, even briefly, is nice. Last night my log was uploaded LoTW, eQSL and sent into the contest.

Today I’ll get on VHF and work some of the local club members that are making contacts in that contest. If the snow doesn’t melt off the roof of the car, I won’t go mobile and work them from my home.

73,
K2DSL