I operated for 14 hours in the Stew Perry Distance Challenge and made around 400 contacts.
Conditions were poor with some Auroral activity. Despite the poor conditions, I made a few juicy DX contacts, notably CE1/K7CA for a new country and Zone 12, VK6DXI for the longest distance worked – 15.800km, and KH6LC in Hawaii.
Several QSOs were made with Japan, but the US was noticeably absent. Only a handful of US stations were worked, despite conditions allowing contacts to be made to the West Coast.
All QSOs may be listened to on the Online Audio page.
I observe with dismay, the low quality signals that descend on 160 meters during contest weekends. Key Clicks are rampant and several stations made it hard to operate near them due to their dirty transmitters.
Generally it is a pleasure to operate on 160 meters and I may have to reconsider my contest participation, as this is simply not enjoyable.
I am using a Yaesu FT1000MP MK V with key click modifications in place and the radio is fitted with an INRAD roofing filter and a 200Hz CW filter in the 455kHz IF cascaded with the stock 250 Hz filter in the 8MHz IF.
I receive with an array of 8 Beverage antennas, coupled through a K9AY preamplifier with excellent overload characteristics.
I used a very nice feature of the Win-Test contest logging software that is called Targets Tracking which enables real time comparison of last years rates compared with the current rates on an hourly basis.
My effort earned me a beautiful award for the Top Score North of 60° Geomagnetic Latitude.
