47 and counting…

I’d been looking forward to this event because I was hoping I might get on the bands for a few hours for the first time since a 20m CW QSO with K9OM on the 15th of August, over 5 weeks ago.

In three sessions I made approximately 60 contacts spread over the 40, 20 and 15m bands. Conditions seems pretty good overall (sunspot number up at 57) and I was particularly surprised to find how late into the Saturday evening 15m remained open down to Central and South America. Very different to earlier in the year when I was hearing very little on 15m much after 5pm local time (16:00 UTC)…although I’m prepared to accept that my antenna will always be a limiting factor. However, same antenna then and now so things certainly seem to have improved with Argentina, Brazil, Aruba, Galapagos Islands, Kuwait and the Dominican Republic all worked on 15m on Sunday evening.

Although no new countries were worked during the contest, in spite of my best efforts to get through a minor pile-up trying to work a Chinese station (yes, I still need China despite having already worked most of the surrounding countries), I did work two new US states towards my WAS award, New Mexico in the form of WA5ZUP and Wyoming in the form of WY7SS. That is now 45 of the 50 states worked with just Louisiana, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska and Utah still needed.

It was nice to get on the bands again and nice to hear so many strong RTTY signals (on 15m in particular). I’ll be hoping it’s not another 5 weeks before the next time and not too long to the next new one!

Dean Amateur Radio contest, DX, RTTY, WAS