Tag Archives: Contesting

CQ WW CW DX Contest 2009

Last weekend I participated in CW part of CQ WW DX Contest. Since I haven’t used Morse code in last 2 years – and frankly have never been good at it – I didn’t try to reach some high score and just enjoyed the contest.

I turned on my FT-897D on Saturday at 7 AM. I started on 20 m band, found the first strong station and tried to read its callsign. Unfortunately it was 5B/G4IRN – great callsign to hear after 2 years of not using Morse code! :-)

However, after some time I read the callsign and answered the CQ… and 1st station was in my log! And soon a few others were following… I was amazed how well other stations were reading my signals – most of them recognized correctly my call on 1st attempt, which doesn’t happen so often to me in phone contests.

And what was my surprise after about 35 QSOs, when I found out that I was transmitting with just 20 Watts! (I’d been doing some experiments with digimodes the day before and had forgotten to set power back to 100 W)

During the whole contest I made 146 contacts with 33 DXCC countries and 13 CQ zones, most of them on 20 meters band. I was a little disappointed that I made only 11 QSOs on 15 meters – there was quite a strong QRM, sometimes even S7-S8. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by 40 meters band – for 1st time I managed to make contact with U.S. station.

To sum up, I must say I really liked the CW contest and decided to work on my “Morse code reading skills” to be better next time.

Here you can see a table of contacted DXCC entities:

DXCC entity 3.5 MHz 7 MHz 14 MHz 21 MHz 28 MHz All bands
United States of America 0 10 35 1 0 46
European Russia 1 4 12 0 0 17
Asiatic Russia 0 3 4 7 0 14
Spain 1 6 7 0 0 14
Ukraine 0 2 3 0 0 5
Italy 0 2 2 0 0 4
Portugal 0 2 2 0 0 4
Bulgaria 1 1 1 0 0 3
Cyprus 0 0 3 0 0 3
Israel 0 2 1 0 0 3
Canada 0 1 1 0 0 2
Canary Is. 0 2 0 0 0 2
Fed. Rep. of Germany 2 0 0 0 0 2
France 1 0 1 0 0 2
Kazakhstan 0 2 0 0 0 2
Latvia 1 1 0 0 0 2
Lithuania 2 0 0 0 0 2
Serbia 1 1 0 0 0 2
Sweden 0 0 2 0 0 2
Turkey 0 2 0 0 0 2
Armenia 0 0 0 1 0 1
Balearic Is. 0 1 0 0 0 1
Brazil 0 0 1 0 0 1
Croatia 0 0 1 0 0 1
England 0 0 1 0 0 1
Estonia 0 1 0 0 0 1
Georgia 0 0 1 0 0 1
Greece 0 1 0 0 0 1
Hungary 1 0 0 0 0 1
Romania 0 1 0 0 0 1
Sardinia 0 1 0 0 0 1
Sierra Leone 0 0 0 1 0 1
Sudan 0 0 0 1 0 1

And here is table of contacted CQ zones:

CQ zone 3.5 MHz 7 MHz 14 MHz 21 MHz 28 MHz All bands
05 – E Z of N. America 0 10 27 1 0 38
14 – W Z of Europe 4 8 12 0 0 24
16 – E Z of Europe 1 6 15 2 0 24
15 – Central European Z 5 5 3 0 0 13
20 – Balkan Z 1 7 5 0 0 13
17 – W Z of Siberia 0 4 2 5 0 11
04 – Central Z of N. America 0 1 9 0 0 10
33 – NW Z of Africa 0 4 1 0 0 5
18 – Central Siberian Z 0 1 2 0 0 3
21 – SW Z of Asia 0 0 1 1 0 2
11 – Central Z of S. America 0 0 1 0 0 1
34 – NE Z of Africa 0 0 0 1 0 1
35 – Central Z of Africa 0 0 0 1 0 1

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