The propagation gods were not smiling on my RDX effort this year. It felt like I was in the proverbial black hole the entire contest, especially compared to the guys down south and back east.
Had a 1.5 hour run to EU on 20m, and that was basically it for Europe. Russian stations were hard to find on any band.
All EU and Russia Qs on 40m were worked skew path beaming about 100 degrees. The signals were weak and plagued with echo and some flutter, making it the radio equivalent of a root canal to receive the number. Major thanks to those stations for the repeats as we battled to finish the QSO.
Poor propagation to Europe, and Russia in particular, made for a tough 24 hours. I couldn’t tell if lack of activity from Asia or poor propagation was to blame for my low Asia numbers. Probably both.
Thank you to my neighbor to the north, VE7JH, for my only Q on 10m.
73, Mitch, K7RL
