With the not so great weather we had around my QTH, I figured to turn on the radio and participate in the ARRL DX side band contest this weekend. It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve did any sort of SSB contesting from my own station. It’s a combination of the solar cycle, RFI from solar panels in my area and being spoiled by operation at contest station K1TTT.

This happened just a couple houses away. The trees on my street have seen better days. They are not mostly hollow and were constantly shedding limbs. Thankfully the town cut the tree that was directly in-front of my house. They left the stump but after this weekend, I’m grateful. However, I was worried about my roof mounted beam (CL-33) surviving the weekend.

Getting Back On The Air

I was surprised to turn on the radio and hear signals… Everywhere. It sort of felt like 2011 again. My ears piqued and I was scrambling to set up my logging software and headset. I recorded my macros and away I went.

Since I wasn’t really planning on putting in a serious effort (Which I have yet to do from my home), I turned on the cluster and did mostly S&P (Search and Pounce). I was sticking with 20 meters with the hopes of entering as single band until I looked at the rules. Since I was using the cluster/telnet, It puts me into the “Unlimited” category that doesn’t have single bands. I ended up entering as “Single Operator All Band, Unlimited, Low Power” (SOAB(U)-LP). I went with low power because I no longer have high power gear at the QTH.

My Goal Was 100 QSOs

One should always set a goal. I decided to be easy and make just 100 QSOs. I figured with the way 20 meters was sounding, I should be able to get that in a couple hours. Nope! I had to fight a bit because I was running low power. I started noticing a lot of spots on 15m so I went over a played.

It took a few hours but I met my goal. Turned off the radio and did stuff around the house. I though I was done but Sunday morning came along and knew there was more people out there.

Don’t be an appliance operator

I was starting to get frustrated during the contest. I recall being easily able to work Italy and Germany. I was struggling. The mix of QRM from everyone trying to squeeze into a tight band, local RFI and poor conditions wasn’t doing well with me. That was until a colleague made a side comment about features of my K3 that I wasn’t using.

I narrowed the filter to use my 1.8Khz filter, shifted the filter, turned the AGC from fast to slow, enabled the noise blanker and turned on the noise reduction at times. My biggest aid was the RF Gain knob.  All of those combined made operating in my environment much easier. I paid good money for this equipment and I am certain you did as well. Take advantage of what you have. In my case, I forgot about it.

Overall thoughts

I ended up making 155 contacts. I was hoping to make 50k points but life took me away from the radio.

There are some “ATNO”  (All Time New One) contacts in the log. Z60K (Kosovo) sticks out. I thought PZ5K (Suriname) would be another but I worked PZ5RA back in 2015. Hopefully I get some new band slots.

I had fun. It proved that I could do contesting from home. I have to work harder but it’s still possible.

Thanks for reading!