I had the opportunity to fully participate in the November SKCC Weekend Sprint. It was for 24 hours on Nov 14th UTC. I did sleep for 8 of those hours by the way. I setup the IC-703 for 1 watt and used the all band doublet here at the house. The conditions were great in my opinion. I worked 21 on 40 m, 7 on 80 m, 20 on 20 m for 48 total. 24 States and it was a pleasure to work Bert F6HKA on 20 meters. I had worked him on 40 meters previously. So that is 4616 miles per watt. The greatest distance state-side was NG7Z in Washington State for 2276 miles per watt.
By the way, I also met a new local ham (to me) W5ONX on 80 meters in the mist of the sprint. He was running 500 watts. The doublet is giving some good service considering there must be some loss in the system coax, balun, and feedline. It is up about 30 feet but part of it is over the roof. I only had to give repeats on a couple of contacts.
See the SKCC WES results and scroll down to the by category list..I did pretty well in the 1 watt category.. The SKCC sprints are always fun event. Even though it is a contest it is friendly and the code speed is casual. So if you do code consider joining SKCC. there are currently 7244 members.
Greg
I enjoy Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio, Field Days, QRP, satellites, and CW. I have many friends in the hobby that make it fun. I will keep you posted on what I learn about amateur radio on this blog.
