The first contest in the 2023 season. Changed job back in Aug took all the
time from radio and the station. Even felt rusty, made lot of rookie typing
errors and operated slooow in general.
The propagation was interesting. 20m turned into a night band, both early
afternoons were a struggle. Expected difficult same time USA-JA antenna
“propelling” but actually this was not the case. I had no JA run at all but
the stn signals were huge I found. Similarly to USA direction. Had the needed
signal strength but on Sun felt like I ran out of callers.
The shocking part was when the heretofore relatively small gap to Dave
suddenly started significantly increasing.
Need to learn to pick the correct pauses tho. Painfully lots of EU mults
remained on the band on Sun morning as I had to stop to fill the off time
requirements.
All-in-all cannot be disappointed as I could keep the score in the 10% QSO
range to the big guys.
Thanks for the calls.