The ARRL 10m contest during the high solar cycle is always a pleasure and as 10m has done in the past it surprised me with some nice DX...7Q2T in Malawi! My contacts were Europe and the U.S. with some South America sprinkled in. The solar conditions were good with a K index from K1 to K3 but the Bz was in the negative numbers for most of the contest. This gave way to deep fading of signals to the point that if you did not get the contact information on the first try most often the signal was gone. This year I increased my contacts by 200 plus over last year and came close to doubling my score. I found each day the band opened to Europe around 8 am local time and at around 11 am local it began to shift to the U.S. As the afternoon came South America would trickle in along with Hawaii Once again I was able to put PE4BAS fellow blogger Bas in the log.
2 comments:
Well done Mike, it is always great to improve your score. Nice DX to Malawi, was it a new DXCC? From Europe we had also propagation to Japan, China and Australia. I see no such contacts on your map, except for one in the pacific. No propagation? Or not contesting at the right time? Tnx for the QSO. 73, Bas
Good morning Bas yes Malawi is a new one for me and the only contact out on its own in the pacific is my own fault and should not be there. It was during a run and I copied EB5A and I noticed once logged I had actually logged E65A. I made a mental note that when the back log of callers stop to go back and change it....well I forgot until I did the map and wondered who the contact was in the middle of nowhere...then it hit me of what I did not do. It seemed that Japan and out that was was just not in the cards this time. I was spotted out that way but no contacts.
73,
Mike
VE9KK
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