I went down to the basement shack for a bit on Saturday night, just to see if I could work a few more new countries QRP in the CQWW DX Contest. The main feeding frenzy was over by then; and things promised to be a little calmer.
I was taken aback by the noticeable lack of loud European DX! Usually, the Europeans overwhelm the bands up here in the NE United States during these DX contests. The bands seemed to be unusually quiet and lacked of "wall-to-wall, packed-in-with-a-shoehorn" signals.
Instead, propagation seemed to favor the Caribbean and South America for the very little time that I was on the air. Although I have worked these countries before, they were all new to me via QRP: Dominica, Uruguay, Cayman Islands, Canary Island, Galapagos Island.
The weekend was full of chores with the beginning phase of readying the house for the Holidays. I took advantage of the almost Spring-like temperatures to get the outside Christmas decorations out and up. It's a lot nicer to be doing this kind of chore when it's 55 degrees outside as opposed to 35 degrees outside! All that being said and done, I was one beat puppy by the end of the day; and really didn't feel like putting too much time in behind the radio. For the few minutes that I was able to devote to it; I was satisfied with the results.
I think this puts me up somewhere to around 70 countries worked for QRP DXCC. With the approach of a new sunspot cycle on the horizon, I should be able to meet this goal within the forseeable future. If I gave it my all; and got up at ungodly hours to take advantage of propagation the proper way, I'm sure I could finish in 2007. Guess I'm not enough of a "dyed-in-the-wool" DXer!
73 de Larry W2LJ
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