AmateurRadio.com

This was a very cool contest only lasting 3 hours on a Saturday morning giving me with some nice radio time and time to get other things done as well. The QRP ARCI Pet rock contest (please if you know why it's called the Pet Rock contest let me know) is a great way to make some nice QRP contacts. One thing I did find is you sure do put the rig's filters through the paces as you try to copy some signals that are very close to the noise floor. I was not in this one to win it or even come close but to log some contacts and look them up on QRZ.COM to learn about who I just contacted. The contest started at 10 a.m. local time, there was nothing on
10m, 15m gave forth some contacts but the best band was 20m. In this contest it was nice  leisurely  CW not like the world wide contests were CW sounds more like machine gun fire! Also during the occasional contact more was given than the required exchange info.....SAY IT AIN'T SO........we tossed around our names, rig and at times a hearty 72. ( that was not a typo 72 is the 73 of QRPers) This was the first time the Elecraft P3 was used in a contest and it was a great aid. It would show you what looked like just the noise floor but in the water fall below on the display a signal is made very apparent. Then along with the K3's APF (audio peak filtering) the signal just jumped out and a contact was made. This really was the first time I was able to see how great the APF was on the K3 I had tried it in the past and to be honest was not impressed but that has changed.
Power output          5 watts ( I can say I operated QRO compared to others)
Total contacts          9
Total points             2352
It's no record breaking contact count but this short contest was a blast there were some contacts I just could not put in the log as I did not get the full exchange due to fading. Also at times I got so excited about making a contact it wasn't until the contact was complete and it was ready to be entered into N1MM that I realized it was a Dupe!!! But not once did I get the CW sent to me B4...sorry for not paying closer attention gents and ladies regarding this but thanks for your understand.