Sunday 9 December 2012

ARRL 10m contest 2012



I have mixed feelings regarding the event…..

I was very pleased to have worked 6 all time new DXCC countries and that alone makes it all worthwhile.

I am also pleased to have worked 3 new states. North Dakota, Missouri and West Virginia that leaves me with 2 to go, Alaska and Delaware for my 10M-CW-WAS award. I see KE0A and N4ZR are both LoTW users I made a bunch of Missouri QSOs so I am should have no problem getting one of the confirmed.

The propagation was fairly poor and appeared very patchy. It behaved much like 6m, with only very selective areas being workable at any given time.

It was fun running for a while; it certainly is more productive than search and pounce. I still find it very daunting and the behaviour of the poor operators did not help the situation much.


  • Persistently calling when one is trying to work a partial (for example): W2L? and N7ABC keeps on calling.
  • I run at a speed I am comfortable with 23 wpm and the caller replies at 35+ wpm ?


Once again I am very impressed at the skill of most of the running stations. They impress me without fail. They certaily are very experienced in the art of CW.

I was very pleased to work PA0O, he also has a great blog site.

I sure hope LoTW will reward me with 6 new entities in the next few days…..

73, Pierre ZS6A


ZS6A ARRL 10m contest 2012


3 comments:

  1. Hi Pierre, you did a great job compared to me. Propagation must have been slightly better at your side. Didn't hear any ZS station though I live about 18 km north of PA0O. 73, Bas

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  2. Hi Bas,

    I see I worked 4 Dutch stations: PA0O, PI4WPI, PI4DX and PA3AAV

    That is why I thought the propagation was much like 6m TEP. A small narrow (very selective) footprint that wandered around. One moment PA the next DL then HA etc….

    To be realistic I think I did OK, considering I only used a rotating dipole up at 8 metres agl.

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  3. Pierre, I hope you get those 6 as well! Band was very tough here but they all can't be easy. The contest season is just getting warmed up so hopefully 10 meters will continue to get better as the winter progresses. Good DX my friend!

    ReplyDelete