Thursday, April 2, 2015

CQ World Wide WPX SSB - QRP Style

Nick KE0ATH Spinnin' the dial!
It has been way to long since I have posted here on the blog, and really I have done very little operating!

This past weekend was the CQ World Wide WPX SSB contest.  My son Nick, KE0ATH has been trying off and on to make some contacts on 10 meters since he is a Tech.  I thought this contest would be great for him, so we carved out about 45 minutes on Sunday to get on the air.

Tuning around 10 meters we heard some stations calling CQ without many takers, it was late in the contest.  Some of the stations we worked had like 3,000 contacts, and were handing out #001! :)

We ended up working exclusively into South America.  Nick would give them a call, and when he was successful I would give them a call.  Great fun!

We have the KX3 set at 12 watts into my 66" dipole fed with ladder line.  Tunes up great.

If you look at the picture of the rig, you can see the stand that Nick 3D printed for me to hold the KX3.  He designed it in Autodesk Inventor and printed it - it also has my call sign inlayed into it in the lower right hand corner.  It works perfectly!

We worked everyone that we called as well.

We worked just 6 stations, but it was fun.  Here is who we worked:

PY3KN Brazil
NR6O California USA
PJ2T Cuaraco
CE3CT Chile
HK3C Columbia
8P5A Barbados

It was great fun, and Nick had a blast working his first HF contacts!  Plus I picked up several new DXCC entities for myself!