Mixed feelings…

Yesterday I participated in the 80m SSB UBA Spring contest. A few months ago I posted “I won my first contest 🙂” about my win in the 2010 edition of this very same contest.

So of course I wanted to try and get at least the same score as last year.

Since my friend and neighbour Luc ON7KZ wanted to participate also this time I could expect a little more competition than last year. Moreover Luc lives about 500m from here so we could expect a little QRM from each other. But, nothing better than a little hamspirit and we both decided to participate in the QRP-class (10W SSB). Thanks Luc! Moreover, as I knew Luc’s antenna was best at 3.620 MHz and mine was set at 3.580 MHz (digi-part of the band) I decided to make mine a little shorter so Luc could concentrate on the lower part of the band (3.600 to 3.650)  and I mostly used the higher part of the band (above 3.700).
QRP power and good receivers and we didn’t get any QRM at all from eachother!

Now why do I have mixed feelings?

Last year my score was a little above 21000 points with 145 QSO, this year I had about 25% less QSO and about 45% less points. Luc ON7KZ was only about 1000 points behind me at the end of the contest.
Now the question is why is the score of this years effort so much less than last year? Same station, same antenna, same operator, same computer, same logging program… but a different callsign (last year I used ON5MF, this year I used OQ6A)

  • Was there less activity than last year? Did the beautiful weather and Paris-Roubaix keep the operators away from their stations?
  • Was I less performant than last year?
  • Of course when using QRP it is impossible to keep a frequency and run for the full contest but was it worse than last year?
  • Did the competition have the same low QSO-count as I have?

So this leaves me with a lot of questions which I guess will only be answered when the results of the contest get published.

Now, let’s have a look at the contest calendar and prepare for next effort!