Well last weekend (10/28/2011) I took part in the CQWW SSB Contest. I would consider this my first “Big Contest!” I setup N1MM logger and away I went! Since I had things to do other than the contest I was in and out. Around 7pm on Saturday night (10/29/2011), Western Massachusetts (as well as most of the North East) experienced a rare snow storm that ended up leaving around 12″ of snow on the ground. The problem with this is that all of the trees in the area did not shed their leaves yet so with the combination of wet snow and leaves on the trees, there was major damage caused by the trees either uprooting or snapping off of limbs that could not bear the weight of the snow. This led to county wide power outages that included my QTH. So now I’m out of the contest and went almost a week without power. The neighborhood felt like a war zone and a lot of people were forced to sleep in the 20 Degree (F) nights.
Since I look at the positives, some good things came from this week. Because of the contest I worked a lot of countries and/or entities that I have never worked before. The ones that stick out were Japan, South Africa, Australia, Alaska and Hawaii because the way my QTH is situated, I have trouble getting out west. So far I have 20 confirmed LoTW QSLs just from the few hours I worked in the contest.
It doesn’t look like much but a lot fo those branches are on power lines. It was even worse at the end of my street.
Here is the back of my house. You can see my G5RV with a coating of snow. Before the power went out, the snow was causing issues on all the bands.
Here is the X-510 a couple days after the storm. I guess I am going to make new, thicker brackets and convince my self to get on the roof… Does anyone have a Cherry Picker???
Now that I got power back up, Here is how I did.
Band QSOs Pts DXC Zn
7 7 18 4 7
14 1 3 0 1
14 97 271 18 59
21 60 172 16 37
28 89 249 18 42
Total 254 713 56 146
Score: 144,026
Not to shabby considering I was only in it for a couple of hours