ARRL 10M Contest

- December 13, 2021

This weekend was the annual ARRL 10M contest for CW and SSB. All contacts were limited to 10M (28MHz). 2 QSO points per SSB contact and 4 points for each CW contact. Sunspot number was ZERO and the SF was about 78, making propagation a challenge. So I operated 100% CW mode.

Contest Summary

I made 2 contacts right away Saturday morning, then the band closed until later Saturday evening where I went on a roll for 80 contacts. Sunday was even more challenging - with very little activity all day. I made an additional 10 contacts Sunday afternoon, the last few of which were questionable!

I operated the Flexradio 6400m at 75w fed into my OCF dipole. Any higher power caused SWR to spike intermittently. I did set up my wolf river coil vertical antenna on Sunday afternoon using ANT2 and operating at full 100W with no SWR issues. I was able to set up and tune the WRC for 28M on the first try: the first 3 sections fully extended, and about 10" on the fourth, coil bypassed, and finally 18 radials and 50ft of coax back to the shack.

The exchange was very simple - Call Sign, Signal Report, and State/Province (or Serial # for DX stations). I operated with assistance: DX Cluster, CW-Skimmer, and CWX from ACLog.

I submitted the contest cabrillo logs Sunday night - with an assumed score of 10,080 points. Deductions will be taken for any contacts logged incorrectly so my final score will most likely be below 10k. Overall I'm pleased with the result. 36 of 90 QSOs have already been confirmed via LoTW, so that will go a long way towards helping me complete the ARRL WAS Triple Play award next year.

Operating Improvements

I've seen a lot of posts on the flexradio community forums about how SmartSDR lacks this or that feature. But I've come to understand their design strategy to focus on the RADIO and enable API integration for third party tools so that each ham can use what suits their operating preferences. This allows the operator to discover and add new capabilities over time, opposite to say HRD which is packed with features and can feel overwhelming at times.

I used FRStack v3 from Mark Hanson W3II which is distributed by his software company MKCM Software, LLC. This will be a necessity for future reference - I heavily relied on the Meter Window during the contest to monitor V+, PA Temp, Fwd and Ref power, and SWR, all nicely laid out in a small window kept at the bottom of the monitor. This gives your more panadapter space in SmartSDR yy hiding Radio Panel and CWX controls.

I also used SWRPlotter6k by K9DUR- a very handy tool that enabled me to see how much VSWR bandwidth I had available on each antenna during the contest. Absolutely essential if you are going search and pounce on contacts - ACLOG lets you click on SPOTs in the DX cluster and have the rig automatically tune both mode and frequency using the Flexradio API.

Shack Pictures

DL4MFM Log Analysis (Text added to screenshot).