RST Contest Report: ARRL DX (Phone) March 1-2, 2025

Another one is in the log for K7RST and the RST Contesting and Special Events SIG (CASE). We leveraged the (mostly) already set up station from the DX CW event and got on the air for the ARRL DX Phone contest this past weekend, February 28-March 2. Again, it was a one station entry from the N7NBV corral and barn, running 500 watts to a 3 element yagi for 10m, and to a Butternut vertical for 80-15.

We made this into a training event and filled the schedule with some seasoned operators, some relatively new ones, and some absolute newbies. The schedule was key: people knew when to show up and when they would be relieved – and importantly, some of us knew when we could sleep. The station was on air the 33 of the 48 hours of the contest period.

One thing new, for the first time we used N1MM logging software, and ran “assisted”, meaning we used spotting services. This made it so much easier it felt like cheating.

Here are some stats:

550 total contacts
193 DX multipliers (each call can be worked on each band)
83 distinct DX entities
Overall average Qs/hr: 21
317,871 total claimed score

It’s an interesting coincidence that these numbers are so close to the numbers from the CW version of this contest two weeks ago. I say coincidence because the number of ops and number of hours on the air are quite different. Here are the comparisons:

Qs: 550 phone, 516 CW
Multipliers: 193 phone, 194 CW
Distinct DX entities: 83 phone, 77 CW
Overall Q rate: 21 phone, 23 CW
(claimed) Score: 317,871 phone, 300,312 CW

I found that interesting!

Again, 10m was the best band, especially on Sunday, accumulating more than half the total contacts (307 of 550) and the best Q rate (50/hour based on whole hours). We spent a good amount of time with the other bands and got worthwhile results. Qs on 80 through 15 were 14, 62, 67, 102). We tried 80, really, but it was just hard.

We were hoping to make 1000 contacts, but sometimes on Saturday the trend made it clear that was unlikely. Still, it was a good show, and we had a lot of fun.

Thanks are due again and as always to Ken N7NBV and Vicki KG7OYY for hosting us at the OK Corral. Bill N7DZ, Ken N7NBV, and Lloyd K7NX got the antennas and station set up.

The best part of the story here is how many members took a turn at the mic, and mostly for hours not minutes. We made some new contest ops this weekend (5 we think).

We’re delighted and grateful to all the people who showed up, and for the new contesters, for the courage to push through the initial contest fright and go for it. Hope to see you all and more in future events.

Attending:

Ken Boyd N7NBV

Bill Bennett N7DZ

Helen Rogero KE2BPY

Lloyd Johnson K7NX and better half Jeanine

Ray Bertram NH6NS

Julian Carter-Carvalho KK7PKA

Tracy Castell W7AWE

Laura Vitkus KK7YZK

Dave Vitkus KK7VLU

Barry Enders K7GVB

John Sartin AI7AZ