Improving score in IARU 2010

The IARU HF Championship is a 24 hour challenge making it perfect for a single operator entry. In addition to chasing IARU zone multipliers participants also chase IARU HQ station multipliers. My personal goal was to improve my #1 SM single operator results from 2009, therefore I entered in SOHP SSB.

The contest kicked off in high tempo from the start, but during Saturday night the QSO rate slowed down. At one point I considered to re-enter into the mixed mode category to be able to get some action from CW. Early Sunday morning the pace picked up again and I decided to stay in the SSB category. At that time I also set the final goal to 1.300 contacts and 800.000 points which would be a big improvement of the 2009 result.

The most reliable band this time was 20 meter where a total of 677 contacts where logged which is three times the contacts made on 40 meter, the second best band. 15 meter was open but not in its best shape, but it did provide equal the number of zones to 40 meter. 10 meter provided less than 100 contacts, mostly through sporadic E but also a few occasional AS and SA DX contacts.

Lower bands where a bit of a challenge due to exceptionally high static levels. On 80 meter the static crashes where at times 20 dB over S9 making it very hard to work any DX. The pennants didn’t help much, it was just too much static in the air. On 40 meters the static was higher than normal, but here some NA, SA and AS DX stations came through.

Before the contest I decided not to bother with a Topband TX antenna, therefore no stations where logged on 160 meters.

The final result was good considering the challenges. In 18 hours and 45 minutes I was able to log 1.824 unique stations, 88 zones and 111 HQ stations resulting in a (claimed) score of 860.078 points.

The IARU HF Championship 2010 was a fun event, and it was well wort the effort of operating in 30-34 Celsius for 19 hours. Now it will be interesting to see how the results compare.

73 de Björn, SM0MDG