The Worked All Europe DX contest is a special one. Europe is the geographical focus, so all the other continents are chasing European stations. Every country us Europeans work is a multiplier. But the real magic are the QTC messages. They increase the score manifold.

A QTC message can only be send by non-European stations. They are details from the log of worked stations, passed on to a European station. Both sender and receiver get extra points. I have participated in this contest before, but never done QTC exchange. This year I wanted to do this and as a QTC-noob decided to go for the slower period on Sunday when there is a bit less pressure in time for exchanging QTC’s.

But…. that was a mistake! The MUF on Sunday was considerably lower than on Saturday. I only have a vertical antenna and am mostly limited to 20-15-10m for contesting, but if conditions are good, I can work some DX on 80 & 40m too. So my plan for exchanging QTC’s faltered as propagation on Sunday was not good enough to have stable signals for this purpose on the higher bands. For a change I ran SOHP at 400W to have at least a bit more signal at 80 & 40, but that didn’t really help.

211 QSO’s in total mostly with the usual suspects. Sometimes a contest doesn’t feel complete if you haven’t worked some of them, hi.

Most of the QSO’s were S&P, with some Run on 40, 20 and 15m. At 13:08 I called it a day, uploaded the log and switched on the TV to watch the final day of the Tour de Femmes. It was a lot more exciting, hi.