50MHz CW CONTEST - 24/6/18

After letting a small amount of sporadic E appear in last year's 6m CW Contest, this year Mr. Murphy really took his eye off the ball with a substantial amount of Es being available, allowing over 75% of entrants to make their best DX via that mode.  Perhaps for the same reason, the number of entries at 34 (2 section AL, 11 section AO and 21 section AR) was up by 31% compared with last year. A total of 147 different valid calls appeared in the logs, from 26 DXCC entities and 71 big squares. The best DX was between G4SGX and EA8YV at 3067 km. However the sporadic E appeared to be there only in the early part of the contest, with most entrants feeling that it petered out after about an hour. Otherwise conditions were variously described as from 'abysmal' through 'fair' to 'quite good'.

Congratulations to G3UVR, EA5FX and GU4CHY who were leading stations in the AL, AO and AR sections respectively.

73, Quin Collier G3WRR

g3wrr@rsgbcc.org