Had a great time operating in the CQ WPX phone contest over the weekend at the NSARC station. It was my first bit of HF operating and the short, rapid QSOs were a great training experience.

After a brief overview of the station from Dave (VA7AM) and John (VA7JW) I was ready to go. I did more listening than operating and operated only the stations that were either very clear and loud or were working at a pace I was comfortable with. You have to jump right in there and though mistakes were made I soon got the hang of things. In total I worked a measely 10 stations, but they all count!

NSARCs primary HF station, an Icom IC-756 ProIII into a SteppIR Yagi for 20-6m.

Conditions were poor on the Saturday but picked up considerably on Sunday. I hadn’t planned to operate on Sunday but a window of a few hours opened up so I said ‘what the heck’ and boy was it worth it.

Armed with the previous days experience and access to the VE7CC cluster I started at lunchtime towards Europe. My first call was to E7DX in Bosnia, minutes later was YT2T in Serbia. I wonder do they ever call each other?

As the sun set across Europe I worked Bulgaria, Spain and the Canaries. I was on a roll and my nerves had disappeared. Remember all that hard work learning to ride that first bike? Well that was my Saturday. But do you remember the day you first rode confidently? That was my Sunday. The ‘mike fright’ had gone and I wanted to talk to the world.

In the end I worked 20 or so stations from the US, Canada, Anguilla, Mexico, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Spain, Japan and the Phillipines. There should be a few multipliers in there surely?

So I’ve received my certificate from Industry Canada, it’s a bit of a let down to be honest. It looks like somebody knocked it up in 10 minutes. I was expecting maybe some nice paper, possibly embossed, maybe a seal or hologram of some kind, but nope. Kids on a summer art courses have gotten better looking certificates, come on Industry Canada!

Anyway I popped along to the North Shore Club this weekend to get an overview of contest operations. They were competing in the British Amateur Radio Teledata Group (bit of a mouthfull isn’t it?) RTTY contest. I do like the digital modes, they are fun to play around with but as far contesting goes I had always presumed it would be a bit ‘dry’ so to speak.

I spend eight hours a day, five days a week working against the clock on a computer, doing it as hobby is the last thing I would like to do. My presumptions were completely bourne out and RTTY contesting is just not for me. I just felt is was more about being a swift computer operator than being a competent radio operator.

The CQ WPX SSB contest is on next week. It’s the one I’ve been looking forward to. Sideband contesting just seems much more fun. You don’t even need a computer on the day, a pen and paper will do. You as the operator do all the work, no computers to modulate and demodulate a signal! Hopefully my presumptions on sideband contesting WILL be bourne out!