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The Worked all Germany (WAG) contest was this weekend. It's an event in which you can operate both CW and SSB. I chose the CW only option for the contest. I entered low power (100 watts and under), single op and assisted (using spotting new works) It was very well attended and during the contest I received a station from Israel calling German stations.  It was a shame I could not call him, as with this contest DX can only contact German stations. Oh well, it was nice hearing them anyway. 

The contest is 24 hours long, which is nice as it does not occupy all of your weekend. Conditions were good for me on 15m, 20m and 40m. I did try 80m on Saturday evening, but it provided no contacts for me. On Sunday I stayed on 15m as I was up early and the band was open. I wanted to stay away from 20m for as long as I could, as this was the band I mainly stayed on during Saturday. This way I would not run into Dupes on 20m.  The contest software I used was N1MM+. 

I was using my Icom 7610 radio which for contesting is a great radio, the antenna was my Ultimax DXtreme  it's 52 feet long and about 30 feet off the ground and about 6 feet at the feed end. I used my solid state CW paddle by 9A5N. The key worked very smoothly and worked without issue. 

Speaking of issues, it would not be a contest if there were not some hiccups. First off I thought (for some reason) the contest started at 1600 UTC. I sat at the radio 10 minutes (1550 UTC) before the contest started. I was shocked to see the band's full when I turned on the radio. A quick investigation on my part had me realize the contest started at 1500 and not 1600 UTC, so I was an hour down before I even started. 

At times, I found myself calling a station, and I was not being heard, don't get me wrong this does happen but not with stations that are booming in. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed N1MM+ software was showing me that my transmit XIT  (transmit increment tuning) was on! The reason the station was not hearing me was because I was transmitting way off-frequency. This for some reason happened a few times. 

The last comedy of errors was at one point on Sunday when I was on 15m the band just went dead! Hmm, maybe propagation on 15m just dropped off. I went to 20m, and it was the same, so I checked the solar conditions,  maybe I missed a huge storm forecast. Nope solar conditions were fair.....oh wait a minute it's 1500 UTC and the contest is over!! 

Contest summary 

40m  34 contacts with 18 multipliers 

20m  51 contacts with 21 multipliers  

15m  30 contacts with 17 multipliers 

Total contacts 115 

Score 19,320