This past weekend was the WPX contest. It’s always a fun contest but this year it was even better.
It was the first contest from the new QTH. I didn’t run the full 36 hours which is allowed for a single
operator but did put in a pretty good effort. The bands were not in the best of shape here in Kansas
but you take what you get. 15 and 20 meters were the hot bands here but 10 came in with some good
multipliers. 40 meters provided a good amount of contacts which is not something I have been used
to. My 40 meter antenna at the old QTH left something to be desired. The new antenna is much better
but could still stand to be higher. But I guess that’s true of most antennas, that’s another project.
This location is much quieter than the old which helped a lot and I didn’t seem to get as tired from
listening to all the city noise.
The map above was generated from my contest log and created in Google Earth. It’s missing some contacts
because the maidenhead grid locator was missing from the file and I didn’t feel like re-doing the whole
file for 30 or so contacts. There was a couple of JA’s that didn’t show up for some reason, I’m not sure
whats going on there. But for the most part all of the 536 contacts are shown.
Without David, K2DSL, I doubt I would have been able to figure out how to do all the files and conversions
necessary to make the map. There were several emails back and forth some months back and his website gives
some examples of what needs to be done. Thanks David!!
