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CQ WW CW
Well, it’s official; we have busted our old score in CQ WW CW and have a new CW Op in our contest team. Thanks to Gary KD8SAV coming out for the entire weekend we had over half our QSO points and Multipliers in the first 24 hours of the contest. Below is a breakdown of our score…
QSO's - 669
QSO Points - 1865
Total Mults - 377
Claimed Score – 703,105
Ops: KD8SAV, KA8OQF, & KB8UEY
Bands: QSO's/Countries/Zones
160m - Ø/Ø/Ø
80m - 13/7/8
40m - 135/57/21
20m - 157/63/24
15m - 229/85/32
10m - 136/57/23
To explain the shortcomings on 80m & 160m, we currently have no 160m antenna and 80m was so noisy we even had extreme difficulty with Caribbean contacts and those are usually very easy on 80m. We only pulled off 1 European contact on 80m.
Our team this year consisted of Gary Whiddon KD8SAV, Charlie Cotterman KA8OQF, and Rob Lunsford KB8UEY. Gary arrived before the contest Friday afternoon to get things warmed up and ready, and boy did he! By the time Charlie arrived on Saturday evening Gary had already logged well over 300 QSO’s and at least half the multipliers that were logged for the entire contest. Rob arrived just after Charlie and provided some technical assistance and then jumped in and help log and made a few QSO’s when things were slow.
Overall it was the best outing for a CW contest from B-Road in a long time. Looking through scores from 2011, unless other stations had drastic increases in score like we did the entry should land us in the top 60 to 70 in the world, top 20 to 25 in North America, top 20 in the US, and right around #1 8th Call Area in the Multi Op / 2 Transmitter / Low Power category. The new amplifier was off for the duration of this contest. We just don’t have the bodies to compete in the high power categories. Official results from CQ usually take a few months for computer and hand checking of log submissions, although so far we are #1 North America, #1 USA, and #1 8th Call Area in Multi/Two/Low...We Shall See!
ARRL 10 Meter Contest
Well, probably the last contest till after the first of the New Year (providing the Mayans are wrong) is now in the books. The ARRL 10m Contest was this weekend. We only had 3 operators, but cranked out a couple qso's.
Total QSO's........313
QSO Points........908
Multipliers............96
Total Score.....87168
Op Time..........18:37
Operators: KB8UEY, KD8HSV, KD8SAV
Sun spots were low, but present. Band took for freaking ever to open up. Once it did it was hot, but jumped around a ton. Contacts were made on both SSB and CW and we did run high power for this one, conditions were not great so we opted to just see how many we could make and not worry about getting smoked by the big guns.
On the CW Side we got Angola, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Cape Verde, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Namibia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, South Africa, St. Lucia, Uruguay, and US Virgin Islands. Also worked US States MA, ME, NH, NY, NJ, MD, PA, FL, LA, TX, CA, HI, AZ, OR, WA, ID, MT, AK, WV, OH, IN, IA, and KS. In Canada NB, BC, NS, SK, AB, and PE. In Mexico we only got BCS & GTO.
On the SSB side we got Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Azores, Barbados, Bonaire, Brazil, Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Chile, Curacao, Dominica, Ecuador, France, Honduras, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, Sint Maarten, South Africa, Spain, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Also worked US States MA, CT, NH, PA, FL, LA, TX, CA, AZ, OR, WA, NV, OH, and IN. In Canada AB, BC, and NWT. In Mexico AGS, BAC, BCS, COL, and DF.
Not bad for as bad as the band was compared to a month ago! Also worked on 10m CW and explicitly stating NOT IN CONTEST was RI1ANF on South Shetland Islands.
Sorry, no pictures with this one. Just plain too busy making contacts to screw with a camera this time.
New DARA Communications Unit
The New DARA Communications Unit is nearing completion from the builders. There are just a number of small items left to finish. It just got the insulation sprayed on to the undercarrige and now it is out getting the final flooring installed. Soon it will be done and then we will have a bunch of work installing the radios, computers, and audio visual system.
Mike Crawford KC8GLE
UPDATE! Here it is with the exterior nearly completed!
Here is the Interior nearly completed!
