CQ WW CW was a blast!

The propagation outlook for CQ WW CW was really promising with the recent improvement of solar acitivity, and the sun provided for a lot of action on higher bands while the aurora stayed calm enough to allow for low bands to perform.

SMØMDG was operating with the SEØX in Single Operator, High Power category in Non-Assisted mode. The contest started out in a good pace with 62% of the contacts logged within the first 24 hours. The second night I took a 3 hour break to catch some sleep and getting ready for Sunday’s high band action. The solar flux dropped a little on Sunday and the rate was getting slower as the I was getting more tired, but another 1200 unique contacts where logged and I reached my goal of logging at least 3000 contacts.

10 meter was the joy of the contest, and as in CQ WW SSB Ten provided almost 500 contacts in 21 Zones and 52 countries. Its also worth to note that 80 meter performed well in number of contacts including quite a few DX, but it fell short on multipliers when compared to 40 meter. Most points where collected on 20 meter with 1299 contacts, 24 Zones and 57 countries (just 2 countries short of 40 which topped no of countries worked) and 160 meter provided 311 contacts, 7 Zones and 38 countries.

The station was set up for SO2R using a Elecraft K3 and a Kenwood TS-590S. The main station has a SteppIR while the other station operates on high bands using a temporary 3-band Spiderbeam. On low bands the 2 element phased array and the top loaded verticals for 80 and 160 where shared between the stations.

The final claimed score ended up at 2,3 million points, about a million more than the 2010 score. Next challenge is the ARRL 10 meter contest that I am very much looking forward to, it should be lots of fun now that the sun cooperates.

CU in the ARRL 10 meter contest, 73!