A Slow Start On 10 Meters

3 February 2025

Eager to get back on 10 meters today I went out to Pirates Cove well before my 0800z proposed start time. There was a decent swell producing nice big waves that were crashing on the reef about 200 yards off shore. As they crested you could see the seaspray blowing right to left off of the tops of the waves. It was just an amazing, beautiful sight to see as I set my antenna up adjacent to the fire pit. There were still some embers left over from someone’s campfire the previous night accompanied by the occasional puff of smoke that cast a nice campfire incense in the air.

After I set up I tuned around and heard someone talking about the guy on Wake that was kind of acting like a one-man DXpedition. I wonder who he was referring to… There were several other stations on the air for the 10-10 Contest. That made finding a good spot to work split a little difficult. I initially set up at the bottom of SSB but after calling CQ for twenty minutes with no one hearing me I moved up the band and found room at 28.402 to work split.

My first contact was with Craig, K9CT, who is a Wake Island activator alumni. It was nice to chat with someone who was familiar with the island and share a few memories. After that, someone spotted me and away things went. I tried to convince the chasers I was listening 5-10 up but for some reason the majority stayed at 5 up and made it a little more difficult to pull people out. Once I heard a couple 4 number callsigns to Florida I knew the band was open it would be a good morning on the air.

Three hours slipped by and by 2300z I hit the proverbial wall. All of a sudden the letters and numbers stopped making much sense. I was officially and thoroughly mentally tired as lunchtime was approaching. I struggled through and went QRT at 2330, and logged 349 contacts. Time to get all those in the databases, after lunch, and a nap. 73 and good DX, Allen

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