The 2022 Oceania DX Contest has come and gone once again. It was held from 0600 UTC Saturday 1st October 2022 to 0600 UTC on Sunday 2nd October 2022.
OCDX promotes HF contacts to and from stations in the Oceania region as well as contacts between stations inside Oceania
https://www.oceaniadxcontest.com/
For the first time in many many years I had an ‘all nighter’ and stayed up for the entire 24 hours of the contest. I ended up making a total of 1,009 QSOs with a claimed score of 1,367,456 points.
My operating equipment for the contest was the following:-
- Transceiver – Yaesu FTDX101MP
- Power – 100 watts
- Antennas – 40m rotatable dipole; 80m home brew dipole; 5 element tri band yagi.
The map below shows my contacts around the world.
- 10m – Green
- 15m – Blue
- 20m – Orange
- 40m – Red
- 80m – Blue
The band conditions on Saturday were excellent. I made a total of 856 QSOs from 0600 UTC Saturday to 0000 UTC Sunday. This was 84% of my contacts over the 24 hour period. A significant X-1 class solar flare from sunspot AR3100 caused a significant shortwave radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean. The picture below shows the blackout map over the Pacific Ocean and parts of North America.
The majority of my contacts were on the 20m band. I made a total of 613 QSOs on that band. This was about 60% of my QSOs.
- 10M – 118
- 15M – 57
- 20M – 613
- 40M – 175
- 80M – 46
During the contest I worked a total of 65 different DXCC entities:-
- Alaska
- Antarctica
- Asiatic Russia
- Australia
- Austria
- Balearic Islands
- Belgium
- Bosnia-Herzegovina
- Brazil
- Bulgaria
- Canada
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- East Malaysia
- England
- Estonia
- European Russia
- Falkland Islands
- Federal Republic of Germany
- Finland
- France
- Greece
- Guam
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italy
- Jamaica
- Japan
- Kaliningrad
- Kazakhstan
- Latvia
- Ithuania
- Luxembourg
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- North Macedonia
- Northern Ireland
- Norway
- Philippines
- Poland
- Portugal
- Republic of Korea
- Republic of Kosovo
- Romania
- Samoa
- Sardinia
- Scotland
- Serbia
- Singapore
- Slovak Republic
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- Thailand
- Ukraine
- United States of America
- Wales
- West Malaysia
Unfortunately I did not work any African stations, and only a handful of South American stations.
On Saturday afternoon, I made a significant number of contacts into Europe and the United Kingdom on the long path. My first contact was with Eddy MW0YVK in Wales who had a very big signal.
I also made some contacts in Europe on Sunday morning on the 40m band which I was very pleased with.
The map below shows my European/UK contacts (orange pins-20m, red pins – 40m).
I made a number of QSOs into North America (a total of 130).
The majority of those contacts (a total of 79) were made on the 20m band, short path across the Pacific on Saturday evening. I made 34 contacts into North America on the 10m band. With the remaining 17 QSOs being made on the 40m band.
I cannot wait to get to my 40m yagi into the air!
The 10m and 15m bands were working okay into Japan, Indonesia, and South East Asia. Unfortunately there was not the big pile up of Japanese, with 64 JA stations worked on the 10m band and 15 JA stations on 15m.
I worked 210 Australian (VK) stations during the contest. That is about 21% of my total contacts. The majority of those contacts around VK were on the 40m band, followed by 20m.
- 10m – 1
- 15m – 5
- 20m – 75
- 80m – 43
- 40m – 86
It was very slow for the last few hours of the contest and I was stuck in the 900’s for quite some time. I really wanted to try to tip over the 1,000 QSO mark. My 1,000th QSO was with IZ0OTV in Italy, at 0546 UTC, with just 14 minutes remaining in the contest.
Some of the more interesting countries worked were Samoa on the 80m band (a new one for me), the Falkland Islands, and Iceland.
Thank you to everyone who called and thank you to the organisers. It was a fun event. I slept like a baby last night!
VK5PAS 