The Contest is Over!

Well, the ARRL International DX contest has come and gone, and I think I did pretty well for a barefoot station.  I made contacts on all bands except 160 Meters.  My antenna simply will not tune to that band, much to my chagrin, because I specifically had it in mind while home brewing the aerial.  It’s a 135ft Off Center Fed dipole that’s up at 45ft, and it should be performing better than it is.  My other antenna, the 20 meter Center Fed Vertical Dipole was the workhorse for the contest, so most of my contacts were on this band.  I worked 140 stations and claimed a score of 36,120.  I’ve submitted my log, and while I don’t expect to “sweep the field” mine will serve as a check log for others.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun.  There were some great contest stations on the air, and I think I tagged most of those.  Of course, I didn’t hear any Japanese stations; they are rare indeed in my neck of the woods.  Maybe if I had that 100ft tower with the big Steppir on top… sigh.  There were also some 100 watt contest stations on the air, and I worked as many of those I could.  P40l and P43E were on the air with 100 watts on 20 meters, and some like T05A and LW3DC were on the air with 500 watts.