I haven’t been able to actually just enjoy amateur radio much over the last several years. Between trying move Etherkit forward and dealing with the fallout of the disastrous COVID policy effects on my sons’ education, social, and emotional growth, there was very little time for it. Also, the process of selling our old house, trying to purchase our current property, and coordinating the development of said property was a huge time sink. Now that most of that work has been done and winter is settling in, I actually do have a little bit of free time. In order to get a little of that mojo back, I decided to participate in what used to be a bit of a tradition for me: the ARRL 10 Meter contest.

Getting the equipment sorted was the first challenge here. Most of my ham gear is currently in storage, and not easy to get access to. I did keep my IC-705 pack handy during the move, so that I could operate with it if the opportunity arose. That pack does include a 43 foot random wire and an AH-705 antenna tuner, but I wasn’t super happy with the performance of that antenna at this QTH (I suspect there were some issues with ground loss, since our house site is in an depressed, excavated area on one side). I have plenty of space here, and a bunch of wire antennas to choose from, but there aren’t any handy antenna supports near our trailer (i.e. trees), and I didn’t want to try to run hundreds of feet of feedline while running QRP, so I decided to get an MFJ-1836H Cobweb antenna that I could mount on 20 feet of mast on the back of my trailer. It’s a little bit of a compromise antenna, but only needs one support and is light enough to mount to a travel trailer with worrying about weight considerations.

Since I was working with a 10 watt radio, I decided to restrict myself to 5 watts and enter the QRP category. The shack for the contest would be a 8′ by 8′ temporary structure that I’m kitting out to eventually be a utility and storage room to use while we wait for our house. The weekend of the contest was cold, windy, and clear. I had a propane heater to keep me warm, but the strong wind gusts lashed the hell out of the tent-like structure, providing a few harrowing moments on Saturday. Fortunately, I had anchored the structure well enough that it did not fly away, but it did get shaken loose a bit.

My initial plan was to try mixed operation, but after doing a bit of listening on the CW portion of the band, I realized that my Morse was too rusty for this to be a viable option. I think I could copy a callsign and exchange up to close to 30 WPM, maybe having to listen a extra time or two, but most ops seemed to be going faster than this, and I was really struggling. So I abandoned the CW idea and stuck to phone only, which was ok, since I have typically entered as QRP SSB-only in previous contests.

Thankfully, the solar flux was around 140 for the contest weekend, and conditions were pretty good. Much better than I’ve seen them in quite a while. Given the disadvantage of running SSB QRP, I stuck to search and pounce and didn’t even try to run a frequency. Some stateside QSOs were very easy and some were quite a challenge. Yes, most of the heavy lifting is done on the other end of the QSO when using SSB QRP, but since this was a contest I didn’t feel too bad about that. If someone couldn’t hear me well, they didn’t hesitate to move on, and that’s how it should be. DX QSOs weren’t very plentiful, which was a bit disappointing. I didn’t hear much of EU at all and got no QSOs there. South America came in here reasonably well but I couldn’t break through the pileups to those stations. Also I was a bit surprised to observe that I didn’t hear much of OC and AS here. The band seemed to shut down fairly early in the afternoon.

All in all, I didn’t do too bad given the antenna and radio situation. By coincidence, I ended up with exactly 100 QSOs over two days of operation. It’s not my greatest effort, but I’m pleased to just be doing some radio again. I’m going to make the effort to keep being more active on the air, mainly by doing POTA chasing and perhaps even an activation or two. I also hope to be able to get a rudimentary lab up and running at some point, so that I can start building things again, but that’s still going to be a little way down the road, depending on how things shake out with our house.

Bonus content: Noodle the Beagle enjoying her first snow:

START-OF-LOG: 3.0
CREATED-BY: N3FJP's ARRL 10 Meter Contest Log 6.1.3
CONTEST: ARRL-10
CALLSIGN: NT7S
LOCATION: OR
CATEGORY-OPERATOR: SINGLE-OP
CATEGORY-STATION: FIXED
CATEGORY-TRANSMITTER: ONE
CATEGORY-POWER: QRP
CATEGORY-ASSISTED: NON-ASSISTED
CATEGORY-BAND: 10M
CATEGORY-MODE: MIXED
CLAIMED-SCORE: 6800
OPERATORS: NT7S
NAME: Jason Milldrum
ADDRESS-CITY: Amity
ADDRESS-STATE-PROVINCE: OR
ADDRESS-POSTALCODE: 97101
ADDRESS-COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: milldrum@gmail.com
QSO: 28428 PH 2022-12-10 1653 NT7S          59      OR W5LLA         59      AR
QSO: 28396 PH 2022-12-10 1716 NT7S          59      OR N8OO          59      LA
QSO: 28436 PH 2022-12-10 1717 NT7S          59      OR W9NY          59      IN
QSO: 28477 PH 2022-12-10 1718 NT7S          59      OR K5TR          59      TX
QSO: 28315 PH 2022-12-10 1723 NT7S          59      OR KG9N          59      IL
QSO: 28440 PH 2022-12-10 1729 NT7S          59      OR N4SV          59      IN
QSO: 28463 PH 2022-12-10 1732 NT7S          59      OR K4RO          59      TN
QSO: 28422 PH 2022-12-10 1748 NT7S          59      OR KT4Q          59      NC
QSO: 28448 PH 2022-12-10 1756 NT7S          59      OR K0SIX         59      MN
QSO: 28346 PH 2022-12-10 1811 NT7S          59      OR AC9S          59      IL
QSO: 28319 PH 2022-12-10 1814 NT7S          59      OR N4SS          59      KY
QSO: 28428 PH 2022-12-10 1817 NT7S          59      OR W5LLX         59      AR
QSO: 28441 PH 2022-12-10 1819 NT7S          59      OR VE3AT         59      ON
QSO: 28509 PH 2022-12-10 1823 NT7S          59      OR W5PR          59      TX
QSO: 28540 PH 2022-12-10 1829 NT7S          59      OR XE2JS         59     CHH
QSO: 28571 PH 2022-12-10 1831 NT7S          59      OR WV4P          59      TN
QSO: 28595 PH 2022-12-10 1831 NT7S          59      OR WB9Z          59      IL
QSO: 28432 PH 2022-12-10 1851 NT7S          59      OR K4AB          59      AL
QSO: 28473 PH 2022-12-10 1852 NT7S          59      OR K4IU          59      MN
QSO: 28612 PH 2022-12-10 1858 NT7S          59      OR N2BJ          59      IL
QSO: 28499 PH 2022-12-10 1900 NT7S          59      OR NX5M          59      TX
QSO: 28488 PH 2022-12-10 1904 NT7S          59      OR TI5VMJ        59     485
QSO: 28408 PH 2022-12-10 1907 NT7S          59      OR KU1CW         59      OR
QSO: 28340 PH 2022-12-10 1909 NT7S          59      OR KG5VK         59      TX
QSO: 28334 PH 2022-12-10 1910 NT7S          59      OR W5AP          59      TX
QSO: 28531 PH 2022-12-10 1913 NT7S          59      OR K9MU          59      WI
QSO: 28581 PH 2022-12-10 1915 NT7S          59      OR WD4PTJ        59      TN
QSO: 28458 PH 2022-12-10 1922 NT7S          59      OR K0TT          59      MN
QSO: 28362 PH 2022-12-10 1929 NT7S          59      OR KD0JLE        59      KS
QSO: 28301 PH 2022-12-10 1931 NT7S          59      OR K2DRH         59      IL
QSO: 28494 PH 2022-12-10 1943 NT7S          59      OR KC9K          59      IL
QSO: 28603 PH 2022-12-10 1948 NT7S          59      OR W5LO          59      TX
QSO: 28546 PH 2022-12-10 1951 NT7S          59      OR K0MD          59      MN
QSO: 28525 PH 2022-12-10 1953 NT7S          59      OR KU9R          59      IN
QSO: 28377 PH 2022-12-10 1957 NT7S          59      OR KI0F          59      MN
QSO: 28335 PH 2022-12-10 2001 NT7S          59      OR W4DD          59      GA
QSO: 28333 PH 2022-12-10 2005 NT7S          59      OR WZ1V          59      CT
QSO: 28426 PH 2022-12-10 2016 NT7S          59      OR KE0ITC        59      IA
QSO: 28497 PH 2022-12-10 2019 NT7S          59      OR NY0V          59      MN
QSO: 28615 PH 2022-12-10 2110 NT7S          59      OR V31MA         59     722
QSO: 28397 PH 2022-12-10 2118 NT7S          59      OR N0MA          59      IA
QSO: 28493 PH 2022-12-10 2131 NT7S          59      OR AI0M          59      MN
QSO: 28523 PH 2022-12-10 2132 NT7S          59      OR N0AT          59      MN
QSO: 28574 PH 2022-12-10 2134 NT7S          59      OR K1KD          59      MN
QSO: 28334 PH 2022-12-10 2150 NT7S          59      OR WA5SOG        59      AR
QSO: 28373 PH 2022-12-10 2156 NT7S          59      OR TI1K          59    1707
QSO: 28597 PH 2022-12-10 2207 NT7S          59      OR W2ODH         59      TX
QSO: 28305 PH 2022-12-10 2212 NT7S          59      OR NT5V          59      TX
QSO: 28351 PH 2022-12-10 2217 NT7S          59      OR K5DB          59      AR
QSO: 28404 PH 2022-12-10 2220 NT7S          59      OR W7ZB          59      OR
QSO: 28413 PH 2022-12-10 2222 NT7S          59      OR KW8N          59      OH
QSO: 28442 PH 2022-12-10 2224 NT7S          59      OR K5GKC         59      TX
QSO: 28593 PH 2022-12-10 2228 NT7S          59      OR WD6BNY        59      WI
QSO: 28387 PH 2022-12-10 2255 NT7S          59      OR AJ6T          59      TN
QSO: 28459 PH 2022-12-11 1539 NT7S          59      OR TI1T          59    1292
QSO: 28358 PH 2022-12-11 1559 NT7S          59      OR WB8JBM        59      OH
QSO: 28370 PH 2022-12-11 1615 NT7S          59      OR KM8Q          59      OH
QSO: 28418 PH 2022-12-11 1616 NT7S          59      OR K9TI          59      IN
QSO: 28380 PH 2022-12-11 1623 NT7S          59      OR KV9O          59      WI
QSO: 28417 PH 2022-12-11 1627 NT7S          59      OR NF9Z          59      IL
QSO: 28580 PH 2022-12-11 1635 NT7S          59      OR K8SWD         59      MI
QSO: 28607 PH 2022-12-11 1709 NT7S          59      OR W8BI          59      OH
QSO: 28356 PH 2022-12-11 1742 NT7S          59      OR KQ7I          59      OR
QSO: 28628 PH 2022-12-11 1754 NT7S          59      OR KD9AC         59      IL
QSO: 28442 PH 2022-12-11 1801 NT7S          59      OR KF0GV         59      MN
QSO: 28558 PH 2022-12-11 1822 NT7S          59      OR W4MLB         59      FL
QSO: 28508 PH 2022-12-11 1844 NT7S          59      OR PJ2T          59    2316
QSO: 28680 PH 2022-12-11 1846 NT7S          59      OR N9RJM         59      IL
QSO: 28639 PH 2022-12-11 1847 NT7S          59      OR KT0K          59      NE
QSO: 28377 PH 2022-12-11 1857 NT7S          59      OR WA0MHJ        59      MN
QSO: 28389 PH 2022-12-11 1907 NT7S          59      OR W2QJ          59      NJ
QSO: 28422 PH 2022-12-11 1911 NT7S          59      OR W4KW          59      TN
QSO: 28542 PH 2022-12-11 1914 NT7S          59      OR ND0C          59      MN
QSO: 28546 PH 2022-12-11 1914 NT7S          59      OR NE9U          59      WI
QSO: 28555 PH 2022-12-11 1915 NT7S          59      OR VE4IM         59      MB
QSO: 28602 PH 2022-12-11 1918 NT7S          59      OR NI0K          59      MN
QSO: 28631 PH 2022-12-11 1919 NT7S          59      OR W5TN          59      TX
QSO: 28312 PH 2022-12-11 1925 NT7S          59      OR KA2K          59      NJ
QSO: 28404 PH 2022-12-11 1929 NT7S          59      OR N0XT          59      MN
QSO: 28420 PH 2022-12-11 1932 NT7S          59      OR WB0YYE        59      NE
QSO: 28485 PH 2022-12-11 1934 NT7S          59      OR W0BM          59      MN
QSO: 28527 PH 2022-12-11 1938 NT7S          59      OR KP2B          59    3246
QSO: 28574 PH 2022-12-11 1940 NT7S          59      OR K1JB          59      ME
QSO: 28593 PH 2022-12-11 1941 NT7S          59      OR WA1T          59      ME
QSO: 28614 PH 2022-12-11 1943 NT7S          59      OR NA1E          59      NH
QSO: 28316 PH 2022-12-11 1948 NT7S          59      OR K3WW          59      PA
QSO: 28566 PH 2022-12-11 1957 NT7S          59      OR N4YDU         59      NC
QSO: 28587 PH 2022-12-11 1958 NT7S          59      OR N0EX          59      MN
QSO: 28303 PH 2022-12-11 2001 NT7S          59      OR KD2ZEL        59      NY
QSO: 28397 PH 2022-12-11 2007 NT7S          59      OR N9DJ          59      IL
QSO: 28362 PH 2022-12-11 2019 NT7S          59      OR N9ARX         59      NE
QSO: 28456 PH 2022-12-11 2024 NT7S          59      OR K9KE          59      IL
QSO: 28324 PH 2022-12-11 2035 NT7S          59      OR ZF5T          59    2940
QSO: 28333 PH 2022-12-11 2036 NT7S          59      OR KE0IZE        59      IA
QSO: 28372 PH 2022-12-11 2038 NT7S          59      OR W8GP          59      MI
QSO: 28556 PH 2022-12-11 2044 NT7S          59      OR KD5J          59      AR
QSO: 28596 PH 2022-12-11 2046 NT7S          59      OR K0TJT         59      MN
QSO: 28333 PH 2022-12-11 2049 NT7S          59      OR K3PA          59      KS
QSO: 28369 PH 2022-12-11 2052 NT7S          59      OR KL7SB         59      AK
QSO: 28550 PH 2022-12-11 2056 NT7S          59      OR KG5GM         59      TX
END-OF-LOG: