ARRL Intl DX Contest Summary
This contest was a lot of fun. I ran the whole time using the new Yaesu FT-450. I must say it performed quite well. The receiver is much quieter than the Alinco DX-70 it replaced and the IF DSP functions really helped separate out the weak signals. All in all, I am quite impressed with it! I was disappointed that I couldn’t keep my hands free by using my headset. I had made an adapter for my Heil BM-10 headset but was disappointed to have some AC hum on the audio. That sent me back to the hand mic thus slowing my logging and QSO rate.
The propagation was definitely better than recent years. Lots of good activity into Europe on 40, 20 and 15 meters. I made only a few Qs on 10m and 80m. As usual, I only operated about 1/3 of the contest but still managed a couple hundred QSOs. Below is the QSOMap plot of my QSOs.
Click for larger image
Posted: March 9th, 2010 under Uncategorized.