Lots of good things going on this month besides a chance to enter a turkey-coma on Thanksgiving. CW Sweepstakes is this weekend, and SSB in two weeks. CQ’s WW CW DX contest is just three weekends away, and the ARRL’s 160 meter contest is at the end of the month. My family won’t be seeing much of me this month!
I’m trying to use an Elecraft KAT-500 automatic tuner for the first time — things are still a bit rough around the edges with the firmware, but getting better. So far it is tuning my 435 foot diameter loop on all bands from 160 to 6 meters. I look forward to future firmware changes.
I did run the CQ WW SSB contest this past weekend in an attempt to get my Phone DXCC (I have CW and Mixed). It is embarrassing how poorly I did compared to world-class single operators, even when you take into account that I operated less than half of the contest. Of course I was running Search & Pounce the entire contest which is not how you get a good score. Unfortunately my goal for Sweepstakes CW & SSB is similar (to complete WAS Triple Play), so I will be running S&P in those contests as well.
