The AM Forum

Conditions good today around noon. I was working EU and out west without turning the antenna running about 80 watts.
I lasted about 45 minutes and worked about 15 stations.

Quite a few EU AM stations on this morning. Had a nice chat with Mervin, GW8TBG. Had worked him a few weeks ago on 80 meters.

Coulda swore I heard K1ETP very briefly on 29020 or thereabouts yesterday.

He was on 29024XX. I worked him. Not real FB copy but I'm in the work everyone too close contest.

Yah, the bottom of the band looks like 20 meters. I worked 6 stations in Europe down in the lower regions before venturing up to the top of the band. Had a nice chat on AM with K5UOT who was running QRP from New Mexico, then ran into K5TDC who is near Austin, TX. His 25 watts to a vertical was booming into CT most of the time. It would be fine with me if these conditions continued for a few years!

Rob W1AEX

I had a blast working the 10 meter contest this weekend!

I worked 47 countries, 37 states in a about a 14 hour period. Conditions were absolutely amazing.

Lots of fun.

I tuned around and called. In about three total hours over the two days I worked 42 countries. I missed the late afternoon/early evening openings into the Pacific (Christmas parties). I didn't try to work many USA stations but I still worked 13 states. I was hearing all the east coast stations, even ones in VA.

I was a fun weekend but tiring. I managed 46 states (could not snag VT, DE, MD, or AR) and 88 countries. Each time I sat down to play, I ran a different rig setup. Some of the rigs hadn't been used in awhile, so they needed some exercise.
Used the Flex 5000, Icom IC-756 PRO II, Kenwood TS-830S, Kenwood R/T 599D Twins, and my 60's favorite, the National NCX-5. None of them blew up, sparked, honked, or groaned. It was just a typical nutty contest weekend.

Just bad luck/timing on Vt. There was at least one well equipped station on there holding down a spot.

I heard probably a dozen MD station. Most were pretty PW so I didn't even bother calling. And most were working EU or west coast.

There were some extremely loud signals out of EU on Sunday morning! Aland Islands was probably my rarest catch.

Yeah, I worked the Oh0 as well Steve. I think the rare/hard haul for me was the HZ1 (Saudi Arabia). He had a massive pileup and he was starting to fade fast when I finally worked him. Took about 10 minutes to wade through the pileup, as he was working EU mostly.

Once again, a lot of fun this contest is. The nice thing about this contest vs. say the CQ WW DX corntest is you can make it as intense or as casual as you want it to be.

And even if you want to work the corntest hard, you can still sleep at night since the band is dead.

D4C was on from Cape Verde. I've never heard anything from D4-land other than D4C in contests, so I guess that one is sort of rare. It's not hard to work them though. They have a huge signal on all the bands. Check out their website - what a locations! I've worked them on 160, 80, 40 and now 10 meters, all on phone.

Exactly!

It's interesting to hear how the band works from sunrise to sunset. At sunrise, the EU and africa come pouring in. Then at about noon the EU starts to fade, then SA and the west coast start coming around. By sunset, AK and HI are loud and maybe even a few JA's if condition allow it.

You can catch some VK/ZLs on long path I think) in the early afternoon too. I've also worked some other south Pacific locations in the late morning/early afternoon too.

I worked Cape Verde on 6 meter SSB back in the 90's.