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ARRL 10m contest brings the band alive.
10 December 2022 | by 
4 Responses to “ARRL 10m contest brings the band alive.”
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Except for the RTTY Roundup this past January, I’ve never operated in a contest. Being newly retired (well 2 years) I decided to try the 10 M contest and got on Friday evening. There were only a few signals, but I did contact 4 stations on CW. It was fun! A couple of the OPs slowed down a bit for me (I was at 16wpm), but it wasn’t too difficult. I just made sure I knew their exchange before I called them. Maybe next year I’ll give it a more serious try.
Mike
N5BGZ
Good morning Mike very nice to hear from you and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. I have been retired going on 4 years now and you are going to love it but I will be honest it does take some time to get used to. Yes get into the contest slow and easy and enjoy yourself. It was great that some of the op’s slowed down to make the contact.
I migrated from RTTY to CW contesting and I will say that working on my CW contest speed sure did take some of the boredom out of retirement. Maybe we will hear each other in the contest today and make our calls in each other’s logs. I looked up your QRZ page and see you have the 5BTV antenna, I have the 4BTV and am very pleased with it.
73 and nice to hear from you,
Mike
VE9KK
Well Mike hopefully you made SA during the contest and did well!
I have a “wadded up” dipole in my attic due to QTH/funds and only had *two* HF SSB contacts ever before the 10m contest. FT8 has kept me going in the hobby with HF contacts.
SA came for me near sunset of the last day – I had my fingers crossed I’d get something special towards the end. My total was 39 SSB contacts and 1292 points for the contest, I consider a amazing personal feat. 20 months as a ham, static filled low signals with my antenna, and new to contests – this was my first real contest more than a random contact during SWL.
Perhaps next year I’ll actually be up sunrise/set for both days with a proper antenna setup. Then again I am a night owl so alarm clocks don’t like me.
Too bad it seems there is little if any SSB outside of contests on-air, well besides a bit of POTA which itself is more of a contest than QSO.
– 73 Tom
Good morning Tom, thanks for taking the time to stop by and leave a comment. Yes, I was able to get into South America during the late afternoon as well as Hawaii. I too at one time had an attic dipole due to the condo cops in the area. I used the Alpha Delta DX-CC and configured it in a “Z” pattern due to space. It worked great and I was able to make contacts all over.
I read on your QRZ page that you are working on your CW. May I suggest looking up the Long Island CW club? It is a huge organization with uncountable zoom sessions and many who are able to reach out to you and help in your CW journey.
For only 20 months as a ham you did great in the contest and it can only go up from there.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great week,
73,
Mike
VE9KK