UKEICC 80m contest was great fun

I took part in my first UKEICC contest last night, on 80 metres CW. This was a one-hour contest and was great fun. There was lots of activity and after starting late at around 20:10 UTC (I had to drop kids to music!) I immediately got callers after a quick CQ.

Many of you will know I am not a hardened contester. I am simply unable to devote 24 or 48 hours of my weekends to contesting due to family and other commitments. And that's what makes the UKEICC contests so attractive. They are one-hour contests on a week night.

Above is a quick video I made during the contest. The time zipped around very quickly. After an initial flurry of callers, my CQs went unanswered, so I went hunting. Contest activity is allowed from 3.510 up to 3.560 and there were plenty of stations on air. The furthest I worked was UT2II in Ukraine.

One of the brilliant aspects of this contest is that you have to upload your log within an hour of the end of the contest - and the results are made available within two hours of the contest finishing.

The results show me in 16th place out of 32 entries in the low power section. Not bad. I'm happy with that. The contest is scored by distance, and the exchange is your four letter maidenhead locator square - in my case IO63. There's no need to send 5NN. For results, see this page:

http://www.ukeicc.com/which-contest/ukeicc-contest-results