KH7T 2011

KH7T in the 2011 Hawai’i QSO Party

This year it seemed that the Hawaii QSO party took off. There were many Hawaii participants with mainlanders and DX stations also calling CQ HQP. KH7T worked 774 claimed contacts, mostly ssb with large pileups on 40, 20, and 15 and one lonely 75 meter QSO. Even made a few CW contacts and got two 7 hour nights of sleep during the Friday 6PM to Sunday Noon time period. The bands were also wide open for DX.

John with his HQP award from last year (2010) 408 QSOs in 47 states, 4 VE Provinces and 14 DXCC countries

I “cheated” and gave the new Elecraft KPA 500 watt amplifier a workout. So I landed in the single operator, high power division. The extra 7 db power over my usual 100 watts did put the station in the position of having a few stations call me that the K3 could not quite pull out of the noise. I usually took the time to try really hard to pull out a contact with a really weak signal.

I do not think I have the contesting gene. I stopped a few large pileups with high rates of contacts for meal calls and sleep, or just when my head could not take it anymore. But I had a lot of fun, allowed distraction by some hunt and pounce for DX, and did a bit of rag chewing at times, and did not get a headache.

It was particularly satisfying to note that with the large piles of calling stations, when I finally got a letter or two of a call, the pile up would shut up until the contact was over. Of course there were a few bad actors noted, but the courteous discipline was generally excellent. I also noticed many people asking if the frequency was in use BEFORE starting to send CQs. And when stations were called on someone’s run frequency the statement that “this is not my frequency, up 5” was often heard.

Has conduct on the phone bands actually improved with the influx of new operators? It sounded like it to me.