The Salmon Run is Washington State's QSO-party-like radiosport contest held every year in September, sponsored by the Western Washington DX Club.
THE 2024 EFFORT
As in previous years, we operated MO2T (multi-op, 2 transmitters).
The fun began at 1600Z (0900 PDT) on Saturday September 21. We operated until the overnight break, then we started again at 0900 PDT Sunday and operated until 1700 PDT.
We managed to achieve a clean sweep of all 39 Washington counties before the Saturday operating period was over. This year, the usually rare counties seemed easy to find -- we had Pend Oreille, Garfield, Asotin, Wahkiakum, Lincoln, Clark and many others within the first two hours. The sun was kind, and conditions were great, although local 80/75M noise was very high (S9). 40M performed well for NVIS work during the day. 10M accounted for almost 30% of our QSOs this year.
We missed Vermont and a handful of Canadian provinces, but we worked 104 multipliers (including the max 10 DX), and our claimed score is 253212.
We had 16 operators:
K7IPT K7PIA KD7SV KG7UMZ KK7QND N7OMS N9MII NG7G W2NCC W7ITL W7MKE W7UUU W7XH W7XTZ W8NGS WB4SPB
Our radio sets:
- IC-7610 + Elecraft KPA500 + KAT500
- Flex 6600 + Mercury LUX + ATS
Our antennas:
- Triband yagi at 80ft
- 40M inverted vee at 60 ft
- 80M inverted vee at 65 ft