CQ WPX SSB

Back at the end of March, my brother Laurie VK4VCC and I competed in the CQ WPX SSB contest.

It wasn't a serious attempt by a long shot, we competed as a multi-one and the weekend included some last minute shopping for some bits for the laptop, a barbecue and two wildlife rescues. Not to mention having to feed all the animals on Saturday evening.

Anyway, we put our entry in, even though we only had 92 QSOs, for about 1500 odd points. There don't seem to be many multi-one entries in this contest, so even with our low score we were coming third in Oceania when ever I checked the submitted logs. Two more entries were submitted from New Zealand at the last moment, just before entries closed and they had much higher scores than us, so we missed out in a place.

Never mind, it was a good experience and I got a lot of new countries I hadn't contacted before. It was a good opportunity to check out some new gear as well, Laurie's FT-950 and my Comet H-422 especially.

Our next attempt will be the IARU HF World Championship in July. We'll be going that from Laurie's QTH at Jimboomba and taking it a bit more seriously. You may have noticed the countdown timer in my sidebar at right.