North Carolina QSO Party 2010!

This past weekend (Sunday afternoon, to be exact) I participated in my first North Carolina QSO Party.

I was prepared to “be the pileup” as I live in Orange County, North Carolina and surely many folks would be trying to work me to increase their county count. I laid out my equipment the night before: my Yaesu FT-817D, my PAC-12 vertical antenna, my LP-100A wattmeter, and all the relevant cables and wires. The next morning I headed down to the green space at the end of the townhouses where I live and began to put it all together. The PAC-12 tuned up wonderfully on 20m for SSB and I was easily putting out 5W for all to hear.

I tried calling CQ a few times near the recommended frequency of 14.260MHz, but didn’t receive a call back at all. The bands were full and surely someone could hear me. After an hour or so of freezing under the shade of the gazebo, I decided to run back to my house and grab my HF Packer Amp to boost my signal a bit on SSB.

The extra power out did the trick, and I was soon making contact with folks across the Western hemisphere. My first contact was 9Z4AM in Trinidad at 20:16UTC before a long drought as I tried to call CQ again for the NCQP. I heard a fellow in Kansas finishing up a QSO with another ham and soon put K0KUD in the log at 20:53UTC. Soon after that, I was able to claim two more DX entities in Nicaragua (YN4SU) and Venezuela (YV1RDX) before shutting down the station for the afternoon.

All in all, I was disappointed with my performance in the contest and the weather (a chilly 50F with frequent strong breezes from the North), but I think I learned a bit from the experience. The next morning I spoke with N1LN on the W4UNC repeater and he told me of how 20m “went long” early in the day and that he and his wife made most of their daytime QSOs on 40m instead. I considered it, but didn’t change bands. I was comfortable on 20m and was hearing some fine signals. I was sorry that I didn’t have a chance to work some of the signals I heard (the Balearic Islands as well as a few other eastern European stations), but I’m sure there will be other times for that.

Now I have to get the QSLs in the mail as well as the green stamps so I can claim my rewards!