So last weekend was a learning experience, to some degree as I participated in the CQ World Wide WPX RTTY for nearly 12 hours. Instead of working all bands, I decided to use a single band and run low power (100 watts). It made the contest much easier since I didn’t have to watch the propagation charts and make decisions as when to change bands or miss those 10M openings that suddenly appear.

This weekend, I was able to get Saturday off and will hopefully put in 12-14 hours in the ARRL International DX Contest – CW, which begins on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately I am still without the use of my SteppIR BigIR, so no low bands again in this contest and I still have not taken down the antenna and sent off the EHU to SteppIR to get it fixed.

This will only be the second time I have participated in the contest, the first was in 2010 and I only made 99 QSOs. I expect a much better showing this time around. I have some decisions to make tonight as it relates to the contest. I have not decided if I want to run single band again or go all band, using 10/15/20M for the period of time I will be operating. Chances are high I will continue to chase new DX in this contest and go all band, unlike I did last weekend in the RTTY contest.

I am going to review propagation charts, as well as my efforts and put together my goals on Friday. Just a guess I should be able to put up 400 QSOs and hopefully work lots of new DXCC that I need on all of those bands. Looking at what I have confirmed (in LoTW) I only have 22 confirmed DXCC on 10M and 20M along with 45 on 15M. That means I have a lot of work to do to increase those totals and work towards the 5BDXCC! I assume those numbers are a bit low unless I include QSL cards I have received. Regardless, I am looking forward to my operating time.