AmateurRadio.com

On Saturday the NAQP CW contest was on and it's a great what I call "mini contest". For me it started at 2pm local time which is great as it allows me to get some things done before I get on the air. This is a 10 hour contest unless you are a multi-operator station then you can work  the full 12 hours. As I said the contest began at 2pm local time but I never got started until around 2:30 as I was BBQing lunch for Julie and I. I entered this contest as QRP and with it being basically a North American contest even with the propagation conditions being low there was lots of contacts to be made. Most of the code is sent at a decent contest speed but there were there those that were just pounding it out. I just skip by those and look for slower speeds (15-25 WPM) I find the time I take to figure out their call and exchange I could had made at least 2 other contacts, so I opt to make the other 2 contacts and let the high speed CW contester work those who can copy them. This year I only spent an 1.5 hours in the contest and netted 12 contacts. With my setup here at VE3WDM I'm thrilled to just get on the air and make some CW contacts. For this contest I used N3FJP's contest program and it was great, in the past I have always used N1MM+. Nothing against N1MM+ it is a great program and by no means did I stop using it because of any issues. I found N3FJP's contest programs easy to navigate since I have been using his logging program for ages. With my simpler station since I had moved I really don't need all the bell's and whistles N1MM+ has. So with my 12 contacts all on 20m my humble score was 120. I still submitted the score cuz you never know!!