I sure heard a lot of that this weekend as I spent a little time on the air during this weekend's CQ WPX contest.
Damn, I had forgotten just how much fun contesting can be, especially when you haven't done it in a while.
This was the first real contest that I've worked running my Yaesu FT-2000. I have to say that it really showed its mettle in the heat of battle — the rig worked very well, given the fact I use a compromise antenna and 100 watts.
I only operated a little yesterday, we had a lot going on here at home. Today my wife went shopping and errand-running, so I got to spend some quality time in the shack. I operated mostly on 15 meters, which was open to South America, the Caribbean and various parts of North America. On 20, I worked the Mediteranean and Africa too.
I didn't work any new countries, but I had a run on North African stations this afternoon as the grey line neared — Morocco, Senegal and Tunisa within about 15 minutes, and all on my first or second call. I heard Eastern Europeans, but they were fairly weak. On 20, if I couldn't hear them fairly well, I knew there wasn't much of chance they were going to pull my signal out of the QRM. I can only image (and salivate) at what a modest tribander and 500 watts would do in a contest!
I wish I had a nickel for every time someone thanked me for the new multiplier today. The WPX is always an interesting contest because of the unique prefixes you hear on the air. I heard some screwy Mexican prefixes beginning with a 6, and of course, Brazil and Argentina have no shortage of prefixes. It's fun to be one of the guys sought after … chances are when the band was good, I probably could have held a frequency and kept it busy on 15 meters today.
And boy howdy, 15 was busy! I worked stations from 21.200 all the way to 21.405 or so. I think I finally put the Yaesu's DMU and display to optimum use today. I really relied on the display to spot stations as I was tuning. Sometimes while tuning down the band you pass a quiet spot, not realizing that you just passed someone listening to a station you can't hear. I took note of the signals on the band, and also when two were fairly close I would know they were there together.
The QRM gave the DSP a workout too. Unfortunately you can't crank down the bandwidth too much or you lose so much audio there's damn little left to here. Due to the heterodynes on 20, I left the automatic notch on the entire time. It's amazing how that can help you complete a QSO, even in crapola conditions.
I think I worked 22 countries this afternoon, and I spent a lot of time picking up multipliers stateside too. I probably spent too much time trying to get some Qs from Europeans that were fairly weak. The East Coast guys were going gangbusters into Europe.
I heard a few of the guys I call “contest regulars” — you know their voices from all the contests you work them in. There's a guy in Honduras whose call I can't remember; he sounds like one of the old balcony geezers on The Muppet Show. I kept my ears perked for him but never heard him. I did hear but couldn't work NQ4I, the mega contest station, as they were knocking down Europeans like crazy.
There were some satisfying moments, even for a very modest station like mine. For example, in pileups I beat several West Coast stations trying to work stations in Central and South America. And for the really nasty pileups, it felt good to break them by using technique and operating strategy rather than the brute force signal. Like the old saying goes, “Timing is everything.”
While putzing around the shack, I ran across my old Bencher paddles that I haven't used since God was a boy. I know I've never used them on the Yaesu, so I thought what the hell? Of course I had to go to the menus to turn the keyer on (thankfully the DMU provides a beautiful listing of the menu items, making changes like this a piece of cake), but with that done, I adjusted the speed and worked it a bit. I've used a bug so long I had to work it a while to get back “the touch.” I'm still rusty, but man, it sure is less work than the bug. I still have my MFJ CW keyboard under the desk, it's truly the best CW keyboard I've ever used.
Now that I have my SignaLink USB running, I'm going to have to watch the Contest Corral for some digital contests. I worked a number of RTTY contests “back in the day” — which means back when I was using a Commodore 64 for my RTTY terminal. That system worked very well, at least until I shorted some cabling and fried the Commodore. Live and learrn.
More ham radio fun to come … it's getting late. G'nite.