The 2024 IARU Radio Championship was just completed this past weekend. This was the first contest in which I wanted to do a ‘serious’ entry - spending time in the chair, working my contest logging program, and testing the equipment. I have not contested seriously for 15-20 years as I just got back into ham radio a couple of years ago.

And by ‘seriously’ I mean making a concerted effort during the contest. Not to win my category, but to get the number of contacts I consider a good number for my modest station. So how did it go?

Equipment Used

Here’s my station setup:

• Icom 7300

• Acom HF1500 Amp

• DX Engineering full-size 80-meter vertical with 60 64-foot radials

• Comtek full-size 40-meter vertical with 60 32-foot radials

• DX Engineering 80-10 43-foot vertical with 60 64-foot radials (some shorter)

What Went Right

• The antennas worked great. I am a great believer in lots of radials - they promote low angles of radiation and they tend to help keep the noise down. I was able to work long distances (Indonesia, Reunion Island, Norfolk Island, etc.). And I was able to break contesting pileups with relative ease (I compare that with someone who has a tower and a beam or two).

• The ICOM 7300 worked like a champ as it has since I purchased it.

• The amplifier also worked great, although 18 hours into the contest I started to get TR0B faults and the amp would shut down. I’m still testing that today and I hope it is not a fatal error requiring me to get it repaired.

Personal Notes

• I had forgotten how the stress of the contest and the lack of sleep impacts one’s performance. By the time 3 AM local time came around, I was clearly not functioning at my even medium best - I had to pay especially careful attention when changing bands and tuning the amplifier. And my CW skills, such as they were, were seriously degraded when copying calls. It took three times for me to copy my old contesting buddy N9MW’s call. Seriously.

• My pileup timing and working contacts are still in place, partially from previous contesting as well as working DXpeditions. It was nice to discover that still holds for me.

• My CW copying ability at the contest level sucks. I spent the vast majority of the contest picking calls off the band map, working the station, picking another one off the band map, and repeating. Back in the day, I could easily copy 35 WPM, but I can’t do that right now. At 2 AM, there were not any more stations to work off the band map and I ended up calling CQ. I worked quite a few stations, but it was awful - lots of repeats, some abandoning the contact, and just beating myself up for not being able to copy calls.

• On the other hand, I could brilliantly copy some stations coming in at like 40-WPM. And I could more easily copy some fast-sending stations compared to stations sending slower. It’s like I ended up counting dits and dahs on the slower stations but just copied the letter with the faster stations.

• I had practiced with Morris Runner the month leading up to the contest - but not consistently and not long enough sessions. And it showed. There are only a couple of ways to improve your CW for contests - Morris Runner and operate in more CW contests. Lesson learned. We’ll see how I do.

• I didn’t factor in the fact that your body gets colder during the night as it is attempting to get ready to sleep (that didn’t come). I also got pretty hungry in the middle of the night and did not plan good snacks to grab and eat during that time.

What could be improved?

Outside of more practice, The other consideration was my headphones. I have a Heil Pro Elite headphone which I like - but it is heavy, almost 14 ounces. In addition, it has a cloth covering over the headphones - which is good because they can be cleaned. But I found them to be irritating in comparison (after the contest) with just having them off. I’m going to try another contest or two with them and if I still find the same problem, I’ll get another one of the more lightweight Heil headphone sets.

Normally, if this was just a CW contest instead of CW and SSB, I would use either my Bose or Sony noise-canceling headsets. They are terrific.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun with this contest and learned a lot about what works and what can be improved. I have a station I’m happy with after two years of building out since we moved to Vermont. And getting a LOT better on CW is paramount. See you next time!