This weekend I played in the LZ DX Contest. I squeezed out 947 QSO, of which about 150 with the second radio (barefoot). Technically all works fine for SO2R now. So except for Murphy, I’m ready for The Big One next weekend.
Because it was a casual effort I started on 15m one hour into the contest. One minuter later I started CQing on 20m. The 15m band was absolutely silent. I don’t mean "only few stations worked" – I mean: NOTHING there. At 1300utc! Go figure. That first hout brought me 120 QSOs. A good rate, but that was it. After that rates dropped to 80-70 – even less.
At night on 40/80m I am still bothered by that noise (see my earlier post) but I start to fear it isn’t (only) that streetlight. I slept for almost 7 hours and then started on 80m, moved up to 40m but things were quiet. 20m opened up early to UA9 and later I gor called by one LOUD JA. One worked out of 950 QSO.
I wanted to make some contacts on 15m, but things were slow. Yet I got called by a VK, a YB and 2 VU’s. I tried 10m and worked 3 stations but no other signs of life. That doesn’t look promising for next week…
The next days it’ll be counting down. Maybe prepare some stuff on Thursday and put everything up on Friday. That will take longer than anticipated, Murphy will rear his ugly head for sure! Then hopefully catch some sleep…
