Sunday my wife had to work, so early that morning as I came down the steps I was hearing “CQ Contest!” blaring from the speaker of my IC-706 that I leave parked on the 50.125 6-meter calling frequency.
Holy smoking eSkip!
I grab the biggest cup of coffee I can carry and quickly stagger to the shack. I remember that I should have moved the 6-meter antenna to the PROIII or the 746PRO, but its too late to waste a good band opening re-routing coax cable under the desk and thread it around shelves and equipment.
I begin at the calling frequency (after checking below that spot for possible DX stations) and work my way up the band. Wow, I had forgotten how challenging contesting can be on Six!
First, remember I'm operating with a self-instilled handicap: I'm running 100 watts to a 6-meter J-pole mounted on a 10-foot mast strapped to a fence post. Calling it “modest” is an understatement! But thankfully, when the band is open, its open — my copper cactus lets me work most of the ones I hear.
But with an RF challenged station like this (i.e., lacking higher power or gain antenna), you have to be creative. As I plugged away at pileups (the big guns were booming in 20 and 30 db over S9!); most of the time I couldn't hear my competition, so I had to employ a variety of techniques, based on listening to how the other op is operating.
Sometimes you know that the exchange is done, and all he's waiting for is to hear “QSL” from the station you can't hear. Rather than wait for him to come back and say “QRZ'ed,” I paused long enough for the unheard station to transmit and then I threw my callsign in — yeah, rather blindly. It worked when someone else with a stronger signal wasn't doing the same thing.
By listening to the operators, you could determine how much time they were giving the pileup to die down while they listened for a call. Some ops only responded to a complete call, some would go for partials.
With my digital clock in the shack, I had the most success by waiting for the distant station's “QRZ'ed” and then waiting 3 to 4 seconds before throwing out my complete call. This seemed to work especially well when the distant station remarked about the big pileup he was working.
The contest brought out lots of stations, and I worked contest stations all the way from 50.110 to 50.310. I was lucky to snag XE2WWW just a couple of contacts after he moved to 6 meters. He held court in the form of a pileup for what seemed like hours.
The eskip paths were running several different ways. I was hearing New England, Texas/Oklahoma, Florida and Colorado stations at nearly the same time. After I worked all the stations I could hear, I decided to find an open spot above 50.200 and try calling CQ. I was well rewarded for the effort.
I called CQ with as much enthusiasm in my voice as possible, trying to keep my voice at a fast pace. I've read that how you call CQ in a contest can make a difference. Hey, with my station setup, you look hard to find any competitive advantage!
Despite these efforts, I still managed to attract a quite a pileup, mostly stations in New England and Texas. Of course, dummy me was logging on a laptop while using the stock 706 hand mike. Imagine trying to run a pileup with one arm tied behind your back. Ugh!
But run it I did, typing most one handed (no wise-cracks, ok?). As the callsigns rattled the 'phones about my ears, I was surprised to hear a very familiar callsign in the pileup — W1HQ, which is the ARRL's club station (the Laird Campbell Memorial HQ Operators Club). Turns out the ARRL's contest manager Sean Kutzko, KX9X, was operating the contest from W1HQ. I meant to ask him if Hamaconda was logging for him, but my pileup was awaiting their EM77 multiplier … 😀
Speaking of my grid square, its not exactly rare but its interesting how many guys I work still need it. I had a couple of guys I worked in the contest tell me they would QSL to confirm it. Coolness!
I'm going to have to mark my calendar for the IARU contest and also the ARRL 10-meter contest. Perhaps too the NA RTTY contest next month? There's also the NA QSO Party. I've worked the WAE contest, and its been a pretty active one. The QTC thing is an interesting twist.
All this depends on how well the rest of the summer goes, and if the bands cooperate. Running 100 watts to a center-fed Zepp won't bust many pileups on 20 meters.
Enough of this. Time to check ebay!
73 es as always …
dit dit