Contest: CQ World Wide DX
Date: November 27-28, 2010
Mode: CW
Period: Starts 2359 UTC Saturday, ends 0000 UTC Monday

BAND/QSO/CQ/DXC
40 / 2 / 2 / 2
20 / 99 / 19 / 40
15/ 42 / 11 / 11
10/ 9 / 6 / 6
TOTAL: 152 QSO / 38 CQ / 59 DXC
SCORE: 39,673 (TIME ON: 5 H 46 Mn)

SOAPBOX: Outside of some of the RTTY contests and Sweepstakes, this contest is one of my favorites. I don’t intend to put in a full effort, but given time during the weekend I sit down and make some contacts. Mainly I use this contest as a springboard for my initial DXCC award, which I am still chasing (90 confirmed).

This weekend wouldn’t allow me much time at all this weekend due to family commitments, but that seems to be every contest weekend I want to participate in. I figured if I could improve on my 2009 total (88 QSOs) I would be doing well. I ended this contest with 152, which was nearly double what I had hoped for.

Much of my time was spent on 20M, but rather surprised at the propagation on 10M, it was good enough I stayed there for some time on Sunday morning. 15/20M were both good to Asia on Saturday at the start of the contest, which ended up being 38% of my contacts (mainly JAs). This was something I had been hoping for in a few prior contests, but was never really able to achieve, running the JAs for an hour or so. I reserved Sunday for EU.

Sunday turned out to be good in the morning again on 15/20M. I was able to work a few new DXCC entities, which included Isle of Man, Ceuta & Melilla and Kermadec Island. I had hoped to snag Ascension Island, as they had a big signal on 10M, but at 150 watts I could not break though the pile up.

All in all I was pleased with how I did. It was purely S&P, and there was always a DXCC calling looking for another contact, so it was easy enough to work the band from 14.000 up. If I had used more power or had more time I probably could have picked up some more QSOs on 10M, as the opening into SA was improving. Maybe that is just a precursor to come in December with the 10M Contest.