Tag Archives: CW

ARRL DX Contest CW 2012

Last weekend I participated in CW part of ARRL International DX Contest. I decided for SO AB LP category.

My equipment was:

Unfortunately, I couldn’t have been QRV for the whole time, because I had to stay in Prague until Saturday morning. I started contesting at 11:30 UTC, on 20 meters band. Start wasn’t very good for me, during first two hours I made only 22 QSOs. Problem was, that it was a quite difficult for me to find U.S. and Canadian stations between stronger European ones.

ARRL DX CW 2012 - QSO map

ARRL DX CW 2012 - QSO map

Read More (score summary and rest of the story) »

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ARRL DX Contest(s) 2011

This year I participated in both CW and SSB part of ARRL DX Contest. I didn’t try
to win in any category, I just wanted to enjoy these contests – in fact the only goal I set was to try to make contact with at least some of nine U.S. states I still need for WAS award (AK, CA, HI, ID, LA, ND, NV, UT and WY).


ARRL CW was three weeks ago and for me it was a big disappointment. As I said here before, I have a little problem with a Morse code and so I managed to make only 53 QSOs (almost all of them on 14 MHz band – only one on 21 MHz band) from 24 states/provinces. Futhermore, I didn’t contact any of the nine states that were mentioned before…


Last weekend I had a much better time in ARRL SSB. I started on 20 meters band and during Saturday afternoon I managed to make 37 QSOs with 18 states/provinces. I know, it’s not very much, but some of them were very interesting for me, e.g. U.S. states of Oregon and Washington and Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia.

In the evening I switched to 15 meters and very quickly made a few QSOs there. However, the band closed soon after that, so I had to stop and wait for the next day…

On Sunday I began at 12:00 UTC and spent the whole time on 15 meters band. It was going very well and I managed to make 83 more QSOs… Nevertheless, I wasn’t completely happy, since once again I didn’t contact any of nine states I listed before. I already made up with the fact that I’d fail this goal and started to close my station, when at 17:35 UTC I noticed some station from Louisiana spotted on the DX cluster… Even though my train to Prague (where I study) was leaving in less than hour and I wasn’t even packed, I decided I have to make QSO with it… After tuning my radio I could clearly hear W5RU working quite a big pileup… It took me some time to call him, but at the end he heard me and before quarter to six I had Louisiana in my log! (Many thanks to W5RU for both the QSO and confirming the contact via LOTW.)

During the whole contest I managed to make 132 QSOs into 32 states and 7 provinces. It’s been probably my best result so far and I’ve been very happy with it, especially since (as I said before) I contacted one new state (LA).

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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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