2014 ARRL International DX Contest (CW)

I managed to squeeze in a few hours here and there over the weekend to make 290 contacts on 40m through 10m for 180 total multipliers and a score of 156,600 points. Since I knew this was just going to be a casual DX-chasing effort for me, I used the DX cluster and submitted as Single Op Unlimited.

Two all-time new countries (3B8VV in Tunisia and YJ0OU in Vanuatu) bring my DXCC Worked total to 179. I started the contest with 73 confirmed on CW; by Monday morning the total was at 98.

Both ionospheric and local conditions were pretty good during the test. There must have been some auroral activity; every signal I was hearing from northern Europe on Saturday morning had a distinct flutter, difficult to copy but at least there were signals making it over from that part of the world for a change. Never did manage to work Svalbard, though. Locally, for once the only noise to plague me this weekend was generated by the neighbor's dog and the infernal train.