Sweepstakes is a fun contest. 24 hours long (out of 30 hours total) working any station only once and looking to work all 80 US/Canadian sections. Running low power and no cluster/spotting so I need to find all the stations on my own. I wrote the below during the course of the contest.
Got on Saturday at the start and worked 20m for a bit before it got dark. 15m even had some activity and it was quieter and less crowded then 20m which is typical of a busy phone contest. Switched to 40m when it was well past sundown and ran up and down the band logging all the stations. Switched back and forth to 20m until it was dead. Switched back and forth between 40m and 80m and had a nice run for a bit on 80m on Saturday night. Even 80m was busy and I was up high on the band, but there wasn’t a lot of noise on 80 Saturday evening. Called it an evening at 12:45am (0545z) with 207 Q’s and 61 of the 80 sections logged. What I couldn’t log tonight was Maine and Western PA which could be a problem since 80m is the best band to get those on so maybe I’ll get lucky tomorrow with those two. I heard a Maine station but he was S&Ping when I was too.
2nd contact Sunday morning was Maine on 40m leaving just WPA as a needed nearby section which I found right at 9am (1400z) on 40m. Also got South Carolina early in the morning on 40m. Scanning the band early on 80m and 40m I’m hearing mostly stations I’ve already worked. At 9am (1400z) I switched to 20m. Within the first hour I was able to log a handful of needed sections as the west coast started to get on the air.
Around 10:30am (1530z) I switched to 15m and there were some stations on and VE8EV from NWT in Canada was booming in and was easy to log. Usually the Northern Territory is a tough one. I heard VE6AO from Alberta Canada on 20m but he has a pile up and found VE6UK on 15m so I logged all the RAC sections at 10:45am (1545z). After working 20m and 15m though it’s still the middle of the day, I moved to 40m and there was plenty of activity. Worked a bunch of stations and even called CQ for bit.
At 2pm (1900z) I need just MS (Mississippi) and ORG (Orange California). No idea if using the cluster would help here. It might since I’m doing a lot of S&P vs run. Maybe I’ll get lucky in the remaining hours? At 2:50pm (1951z) I found ORG on 15m leaving just MS! On 40m I heard a MS station but it was calling another station and I couldn’t get his attention.
Hit 500 Q’s at 8:29pm (0129z) but no MS yet. I did some CQing in hopes a MS might come back to me but that didn’t happen. Near the end of the contest I was calling CQ on 80m and mentioning I needed MS and one of the ops said there was a MS station at the bottom of 80m so I quickly tuned around and found him but there was a huge pileup so I went back to CQing. With 2 mins left in the contest I went back and he was still there and he came back to me on my 1st call. I logged a N4OGW with 2 mins left in the contest as my last contact and my first sweep!! Wow!!! I will send in for a Clean Sweep Mug.
What allowed me to spend time this year vs the last 2 years was there was no home NY Giants game so I didn’t head to the stadium which usually takes about 6-8 hours out of any contest if that happens. So my # of contacts and total score reflects being able to spend much of Sunday on the air. Here’s the score summary:
Band QSOs Pts Sec 3.5 275 550 25 7 102 204 13 14 93 186 32 21 69 138 10 Total 539 1078 80 Score : 86,240
Thank you to all the ops that gave me each of the sections and especially to N4OGW who gave me the clean sweep with MS with 2 mins left in the contest!
73,
K2DSL