ARRL 10m contest 2025

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15 December 2025 | by Mike VE9KK | Share | | Leave a Comment (0)

Final score

Another ARRL 10m contest is in the books, and once again, I was surprised by how well 10m performed. The solar numbers were good—not great, but good. This meant there was fading in and out of signals. At one point, when I was calling CQ contest and a station came back to me, you had one chance to complete the contact, or they were gone for good.

Saturday was a great day with many long runs and high hourly contact rates. I just figured that Sunday would be a lot of the same… NOT. I found Sunday to be slower, with the average hourly run between 50 to 70 contacts. Toward Sunday late afternoon, it seemed I was calling CQ contest to empty space, and it was at this time I found my rate was better just searching and pouncing my way along the band.

It was nice again to contact fellow blogger Bas. He was just at the noise floor, but was readable and in the log. Oh, and thanks, Bas, for spotting me on the cluster—once I completed our contact, things started to get very busy for me. When this happens, I find narrowing my filter to 200Hz and turning up my CW speed from 32 to 36wpm has a way of thinning things out. Not as much in this contest, though, as my exchange is my Canadian Province, and it, in most cases, self-populates for most contacts. Once things slow down a bit, the filter goes back to 300Hz and the speed to 32wpm again.

From my location, I found 10m open at 8am to Europe, and I could hear them answering U.S. and Canadian calls, but I heard none of those stations until noon. At noon, it then turned into a mix of North America and Europe until early afternoon, when most of Europe faded away. Late afternoon it was still North America but now with some Central America and South America mixed in. Around 4pm local time, most, if not all, stations were gone, or the fading was so bad it was very frustrating to make a contact.

I know I’ve hit my limit, and it’s time for a break when I start to make silly mistakes. Case in point: I had a call from a fellow CWop, K4RUM, he is from NY, so my logging program prefilled that—BUT he sent FL. Not a problem; he’s enjoying some warm sunshine. Very simple to hit a few keys and change the state—I do it all the time. Well, not if you’re getting tired like me. I sent K4RUMNY as his call. Then I sent K4RUMFL as his call. I am now pounding foolish keyboard keys such as

“?” my province “NB” and well finally I sent K4RUM FL TU. He gave me two “dits” from his key with what I would imagine was a smile on his face.

I am now gearing up for the next big contest out this way: the RAC Winter contest on December 20. See you all there.

Mike Weir, VE9KK, is a regular contributor to AmateurRadio.com and writes from New Brunswick, Canada. Contact him at [email protected].