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There is still a few hours of the ARRL DX CW contest to go but I have worked all that I want to work this weekend. I only took part for fun, so no targets to beat. I did hope to work some of the rarer west coast states but conditions didn’t allow it. I only worked W/VE stations – in fact I only worked US stations, the VEs were conspicuous by their absence. I did hear one VE but I never managed to work him. So in comparison to other contests my haul of contacts was worse than normal.

I operated for a couple of hours late Saturday morning, and the same again after lunch. On Sunday morning I did another couple of hours but I almost gave up as I seemed to be hearing all the same stations I worked on Saturday. Then the jinx left and I managed to log another batch of new stations. But by Sunday afternoon I’d had enough, and it was a fine late winter day so I went for a walk by the river with Olga.

I think conditions this weekend were below average. Ten metres was all but dead; 15m was quite productive but the money band as usual was 20m. I didn’t try the lower bands as I think my attic antennas are too much of a compromise on those bands to work DX with them.

My total of 55 stations worked is nothing to write home about, but remember I was only working US stations – I ignored all the Europeans and Russians whom I would have worked in a normal contest. I worked 20 different states: CT, FL, GA, IL, MA, MD, MN, NC, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, VT and WI. So my 100W was barely making it past the east coast. If anyone is interested in my full log the contest starts on this page.

Working in a contest is always fun. It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts!

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