Sunday, December 29, 2024

2024 RAC Canada Winter contest.

 

My path around the globe

I entered this contest as a single operator, Low power (100 watts or less) and unassisted (Did not use any spotting clusters). The radio was the Icom 7610 along with the Hustler 4BTV vertical antenna. The solar weather was great and the 24 hours came and passed with Kp1 and the Bz in the positive direction. I had zero issues with my software, radio, RFI and antenna so I am a very happy camper. The only issue I suffered from in the past has been RFI and I now feel with a few major contests in the books and no issues that the problem is in the rearview mirror.
At this point in my CW contesting ambitions I am not too concerned about my score, I want to polish my CW running skills. To do this I am not in the assisted category which means my band map is not populated with cluster spots, no decoding programs and I do very little search and pounce. I just stay on frequency and dit dit  "CQ CONTEST". I was running at 32 wpm which I find to be the sweet spot for contacts. In this contest, the exchange is 5NN and my province, which in all contesting programs would be prefilled at the listener end. If it was a progressive serial number then would program into the macro code for the number portion of the exchange to be sent slower. Stations from outside of Canada would send a serial number as their exchange and some would send at over 40wpm and that is fine by me. 



 

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