vk5pas

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2019 Oceania DX Contest

Posted: 06 Oct 2019 07:08 PM PDT
https://vk5pas.org/2019/10/07/2019-oceania-dx-contest/


The 2019 Oceania DX Contest has been and gone for another year.Â* And this
year I found band conditions really difficult.



The Oceania DX Contest is one of the longest-running contests in the
amateur radio calendar.Â* It is an annual competition between radio amateurs
to make contacts on the HF (shortwave) bands, specifically DX (long
distance) contacts with stations inÂ*Oceania.

The contest ran for 24 hours from 0800 UTC Sat 5th 0800 UTC Sun 6th
October 2019.

Fighting off some bronchitis after my overseas trip, I had a very early
night on Saturday night and as a result, I missed out on a lot of contacts.

I still havent done anything about a dedicated 80m antenna at home, so my
handful of 80m contacts were made on my 40m dipole.

In the end, I made a total of 112 contacts on 15, 20, 40 & 80m SSB.Â* This
was way down on my efforts in previous years:-

2018 279 QSOs
2017 497 QSOs
2016 273 QSOs
2015 400 QSOs

Above:- Bar graph showing my QSOs per band during the contest.Â* Graph
courtesy of https://nces.ed.gov

I worked the following DX entities:-

Asiatic Russia
Australia
China
European Russia
Hawaii
Hong Kong
Indonesia
Japan
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Taiwan
Thailand
Tokelau Islands
Tonga
Ukraine
United States of America


The map below shows my contacts around the world during the contest.
Above:- Map showing my contacts around the world during the contest.

The vast majority of my contacts were around Australia on the 40m band.
Above:- Map showing my contacts around Australia during the contest.

I worked very little in the way of Europe during the contest other than
European Russia and Ukraine.Â* Those contacts were made during the early
evening on 20m on the shortpath and on 15m short path.Â* I did not hear any
opening to Europe on 20m long path.

Indonesian stations were very well represented during the contest.Â* I heard
numerous Indonesian stations on 40m during Saturday evening, but my 100
watts and wire antenna just werent cutting it with most of those stations.

Sadly there was no major opening to Japan on 15m, with just a handful of
Japanese stations worked on that band.
Above:- Map showing my contacts into Asia during the contest.

The highlight for me this year was working A35JT on Tonga and ZK3A on
Tokelau Islands, both on the 40m band.