The Oceania DX Contest is an annual competition with the aim of radio amateurs making contacts on the HF bands, specifically DX contacts with stations in Oceania.  It is one of the contests on the amateur radio calendar which I enter into each year.

There were a few things against me this year.  Firstly work!  Secondly a very high noise floor at home, particularly on 40m.  Thirdly, no dedicated 80m antenna at home.  And finally, poor band conditions.  Despite this, I had a lot of fun.

I ended up with a total of 281 contacts and a claimed score of 108,046 points.  I worked a total of 49 different DXCC entities on 10, 15, 20, 40 & 80m SSB.  This was down quite a bit compared to my 506 QSOs during the 2017 Oceania DX Contest.

• 80m- 3 different DXCC entities worked
• 40m – 11 different DXCC entities worked
• 20m – 47 different DXCC entities worked
• 15m – 3 different DXCC entities worked
• 10m – 1 DXCC entity worked worked

Above:- Map showing my contacts during the 2018 Oceania DX Contest.  Map courtesy of QSOmap.org

My first contact during the contest was with VK6NE on 40m.  My final contact was with OA4/XQ3SA in Peru in South America.

The majority of my contacts were on the 20m band, followed by 40m.  I found 15m to be very poor.  I heard very little from South East Asia, and virtually no Japanese stations.

Above:- Bar graph showing my QSOs per band during the contest.

On Saturday night there was an excellent opening on the long path to Europe on the 20m band.  I started to hear some Scandanavian stations on 20m at about 8.30 p..m local time, so I thought the band might behave.  And it did.

Above:- Map showing my contacts into Europe on the short path on Saturday night.

As I had no dedicated 80m antenna at home, I had to tune up the 40m dipole to make a handful of contacts on that band.  In recent months my noise floor at home on 40m has gone from strength 5 to strength 8.  This meant I did not call CQ contest on that band.  I just worked those that I could hear.

Although not up there with the ‘big guns’, I was really pleased with the outcome of the weekend.

References.

Oceania DX Contest, 2018, <http://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/index.html>, viewed 8th October 2018