Happy New Year to all my readers! The first day of the new year did bring a little contest: SART New Year RTTY contest. Of course I want to score some fresh and first points for 2014, so I entered the three hour contest on 80 and 40 meters. Quite a contest! Lots of stations participating and I even managed to do a few runs! I’ve made 77 Q’s, worked 13 DXCC’s and score 2618 points. I think a nice start for 2014.
Category: Contests
Losing division league 2013
The ARRL of the Netherlands is called the VERON. The organization is grouped into different regions. Every region has its own members. To promote the participation of contests the VERON does organize a division league between the different regions. When you participated in a contest, you submit your Q’s on a website and the every year there is a overall winner but also a region winner.
In my region Wilko PA3BWK wins for years in a row now. I know Wilko and consider him a friend. He has a spotless reputation in contesting. When Wilko wants to win, he will win, no matter what. But this year Wilko had a very busy year involving a big move etc. So he couldn’t spend as much time contesting as he wanted. I did see this reflecting his low score during 2013. At some point I decided to take a shot at the league and try to defeat Wilko. As you readers might noticed, I reported about quite a few contest participation’s over the last months. I didn’t blog about this subject on purpose to not reveal my strategy/intentions to Wilko. Unfortunately for me Wilko did recover on time and we had a great battle the last few contests. Tuesday 17 December the deadline for the division league closed and all scores are calculated. Turns out I lost from Wilko:
Afdelings Resultaat in de VERON Competitie.
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1. PA3BWK 70 38.8 %
2. PA1JIM 61 33.8 %
3. PA3CJP 42 23.3 %
4. PA3EER 4 2.2 %
5. PA3FYG 3 1.6 %
Totaal score: 180
And again a marvelous example of the determination of Wilko PA3BWK. Even in the last weeks of the division league he was able to turn a lag of multiple points on me around in a lead and win the league with no less then 9 points!!
All I can do is being humble, take the second place and congratulate Wilko PA3BWK for this spectacular victory.
Wilko: thanks for a great achievement. I did everything to keep you behind me, but you beat me fair and square: congrats!
Hopefully we’ll meet again next year in the division league of 2014! 😉
ARRL 10m CW/SSB contest
Last weekend I entered the ARRL 10m CW/SSB contest. My 10m vertical (Antron A99) was still up on the roof since the last 10m contest. I did climb up the roof the reinstall the Buddipole. Not so successful this time due to a firm wind which blew it down again and again. Despite the support ropes.
The band starts opening up around 8:00 – 8:30 am. I switched back and forward between CW and USB. Actually the vertical was quite successful this time.
Around 7:00 pm the band was pretty much closed. Sunday I could only work until around 2:00 pm due to family duties.
After all a good contest, interesting to do a combined CW/SSB-contest. I think I need a good strategy for these combined contests next time. There were probably more Q’s to make then I did now.
Considering this the last contest for this years division league, I’ll take a rest now. I’ll rearrange the shack, clean out the place etc. Get everything up and running for the new contest year of 2014!