I’ve been told that timing is everything in life. If that is true then I’m in trouble, because timing ISN’T my forte. Take for example the New England Blizzard of 2013 that descended upon RI like a ton of bricks last week, putting people in the dark and cold, and making travel for folks trying to get back home impossible. I totally missed the CQ WPX RTTY contest because of that and still owe my wife about 20 more inches of snow shoveling, which I missed out on as I spent several days making my way from San Diego back to Rhode Island.
Timing raised its head again during the ARRL CW DX Contest this weekend. I had pretty much blocked out the time, taking a few breaks to socialize with my family, and I was deep in the hunt trying to work 100 unique countries over the weekend (a mental DXCC, if you will). I had been anxiously watching the numbers tick up from the 80s into the 90s, then crawl up to 97, 98, 99, then — brick wall! I thought there was some slim hope until two things happened at the same with about 2 hours to go. My wife told me: “You need to go out and pick up pizza for the girls at 6PM” (My daughter was having a sleep-over, that for the record, was setup AFTER I made plans for the contest).
OK, not the end of the world. I got that assignment while I was waiting in a HUGE pileup for a CE9 station (theoretically going to be my #100 — South Shetland Island). But a few minutes later I figured out that someone had spotted the station wrong. It wasn’t a rare Antarctic station. It was a rather ordinary Chilean CE3 station.
With about 45 minutes left before I had to pull the plug, I desperately scanned the bands from bottom up. New countries weren’t to be found. I finished with 443 stations worked, 356 band-countries, and 99 unique countries — or so I thought. A final recount revealed a discrepancy. My log showed I had worked 7 African countries, but I had counted only 6. Without knowing it, I had managed to hit #100 when I worked FG8Y in Guadeloupe at 19:21Z, a couple of hours before!
In the end, I managed to work 3 new countries, bringing my total to 205. No doubt I have several additional bands for some of the countries too. I worked about a half-dozen “Clean-sweeps” (A station that you work on all possible contest bands 160/80/40/20/15/10 meters). And several calls have become memorable to me, like my Peruvian friend Ed, OA4SS, who shows up on almost every contest and band I work.
So at the end of the day, what do you get for working 100 unique countries during the ARRL CW DX Contest? Nothing but the self satisfaction, which is all that really matters in the end.
And a final note, as I often do, I sat back in wonderment at the ability to reach out and talk to so many people in places so far away. It was almost easy. My dad would have loved to see that. I trust he heard my silent thoughts as I wished him good DX.
