Review of 10 m ARRL Contest 9-10 December 2023
Gareth (G0MFR), John (G0KFM), John (G4POF), Tony (G3PFM) and Dave (G0FVH) gathered at the club over the weekend 9-10 December for the ARRL 10 m ARRL contest! Good to see the HF shack busy over the weekend. Pork pies were consumed and much DX was worked!
The band switched on at sunrise with early openings to Asiatic Russia and northern China. The JA and ZL paths never opened this far north (I tried). The VK path soon opened and John (G4POF) worked several stations on SSB in the morning with real S9 signals. We picked up some nice south east / mid Asia multipliers during the morning.
The north / south path was open during the day with South Africa & Kenya on CW and Namibia & St Helena on SSB. Working European multipliers was very difficult apart from some very unreliable backscatter propagation. Even the big stations in north Africa were difficult, with the skip going over their heads.
About mid-day the South America path was hammering in. Dave (G0FVH) worked several Argentinian stations that were absolutely end stopping.
Very good opening into southern Caribbean on the second day (much stronger than on the first day): Aruba, Curacao, French Guyana, Trinidad, etc, etc all 1st call S9++.
After lunch the band was completely open to the US with stations to work every few hundred Hz from 28.000 to 28.120 on CW and similar on SSB starting about 28.280.
The real polar paths into KH6, KL7, etc didn’t really happen but in general 28 MHz was absolutely hopping and it was a fun contest. It was good to see that G4R has been well used in the last few months.
Article by Gareth G0MFR, 16 December 2023.