Saturday, October 28, 2006

CQWW nearly half done

It isn't quite halfway through the CQ WW SSB contest and I've nearly generated as much score as last year. I just put New Zealand in the log, adding to my QRP DXCC total. I'm now up to 65 DXCC entities with flea power after adding Senegal, Gambia, and New Zealand. I had hoped for more, but I'm pleased that the total is at least increasing.
I'm operating this contest QRP so I'm using the Oak Hills Research WM-2 watt meter to ensure my power out is really only 5 watts. I confess, it is a little exhausting to hear the big guns work a station on the first call when I'm averaging a QSO about every 5 minutes. But, that's the charm of QRP. You would expect to work New Zealand with 1500 watts and stacked monobanders; working New Zealand QRP SSB at the bottom of the cycle is an unexpected thrill!
While I've been going hoarse trying to get the attention of all those far away stations, I've been working on Cab-converter, the freeware utility I make available to Macintosh using contesters. In addition to adding new contests occasionally, I've been adding score calculation and summary displays for the users suitable for submission to the Contesting 3830 email reflector. I finished the update for this contest and that's why I know I'm at 10,496 points right now with 71 QSOs. (I just worked J3A while typing up this blog entry.)
It is starting to get dark so 15m will dry up any minute. I'm going to make one more pass through the band.

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