Another month gone and the days are getting shorter.
It is noticable that the number of US stations worked is on the increase. My US county score is starting to increase again with 1145 worked out of 3077 total. I have also managed to contact several grid squares with just a few in the Rockies and the high sierra to work. Most of the gaps are in Montana, Colorado, Southern Texas, and New Mexico. These states have very low permanent population levels so no surprises then. Checking QRZ for the ones I have worked shows that many of the rare station grids are operated from mobile homes. Not always easy to determine as the use of "/P" dosen't seem to be mandatory in the States.
Having reached September I thought I would check the results of my Chinese 60 hour May dash. I thought I had possibly worked 10 of the contest stations, however I had, but not on all bands. Having said that I did win a Gold Certificate that now adorns my shack wall.
[Sorry for mangling your award image Chris - I 'enhanced' the quality with an AI agent, but it produced a very poor translation! Send me a better image if you have one... Berni]
Back to operating. As expected, a bit thin on the ground this month for several reasons, however I did add another 2 ANO's (annual new ones). At the begining of the month I QSY'd down to 30 metres. Mostly locals but I did bag VJ6X on OC-001 and VK6TDF/P from the outback. By the third week things were getting quiet on 30m so I QSYd again down to 60m. As I expected with our limits on power and a narrow band to play in, little DX. Mostly locals but a good mix of eastern Europe including some new grid squares for my map!
For a change I looked up the RadCom propagation chart to see if I have missed any openings. Fortunately nothing of note other than DX on 80m. The one band I cannot work!
Now to try FT4 to see if I can keep up with the working speed. My results should be reported next month.
Cheers,
Chris G4ZCS
