After ARRL weekend, when I worked 3 QSO's in about 20 minutes on 40 meters band with 500 milliwatts (KC1XX, N2MF and K3LR - congratulation guys), I decided to start working on my 50EETP challenge.

It is WO3B idea of WASTP - Worked All States Total Power. You contact all US states and sum power for all QSO's. As you rework the states with lower power your WASTP goes down. I change his idea a bit - instead of 50 US states I choose any 50 European countries. There are more than 50 EU DXCC countries, so I called them Easy Europeans.

Of course it is less challenging than WASTP, but it is just my personal challenge, to make things more fun. So far I worked those countries, but all of them with QRP power level of 5 W. So my 50EETP was 250 W before the weekend. UBA contest was a great opportunity to lower that number. A lot of activity, and a good chance for me. I decided to work only on 40 meters, mainly because of a very good antenna I have for that band ("invisible" end-fed half wave, 7 meters above the ground - with the same antenna I manage to got 3rd place world in CQ WPX Contest 40M QRP in 2004).

Just before the contest I called OK7FL with 10 mW, and he gave me 549 report. So far so good. It was rainy Saturday afternoon, just perfect for working in a contest. As I do not expect many QSO's I decided to log them old fashioned way - paper and pencil. I often use small (paper) notebook , and write a lot of comments in my log. It is a great pleasure for me to read such a log again after some time. I started with 10 mW, and worked YO5ODH and SX6BJW. No one else copy me, and I QRO to 100 mW and worked DL8DWW, LY4L and UA3QDX - all easy QSO's. LY2OX was booming, but a lot of stations called him. Anyway I switched 10 dB attenuator on, called him with 10 mW, and got him easy. I cannot believe that I broke the pile-up with 10mW!

Later on, I heard UA9CDC very strong. It is new milliwatt continent for me (Asia) and I called him with 100mW. He got my callsign at first call, and the QSO number after 3 repeats. What a great ears. Asia on 7MHz with 100mW, 17dB below the QRP level. It seems that there are great propagation to Siberia - I heard RG9A very strong couple of minutes later, called him and it was easy QSO, again with 100mW. As evening comes, I decided to increase my power to 500 mW, so I will have 2 easy switched powers, 500mW and 50mW with 10 dB attenuator. Nice round numbers, 10 and 20 dB below QRP level. Easy QSO with UU5WW with 50mW, and DK1WU - I have a feeling that Johan knows that I am QRPP. Very nice QSO, with 73's and tit-tit. Germany with 50mW.

After that I have "easy run" with 500 mW, and my 50EE total power is slowly going down. Another great QSO was DL2OM, he was very strong and I got him easy with 50mW. After some 50mW QSO's I come up with new operating procedure. If it is not a new country for me - I will call with 50mW, and if the station I am calling got me, I will QRO 10 dB to make a contact easier for him. Of course, I count this as a higher power QSO. This tactics was very successful with LY3DA, he was not very strong, but I tried with 50 mW, and he got my callsign at first, but not the number. After 10 dB increase he got me easy. My signal is really at the noise level. Later I found UA9CDC again. I worked him already, but I have spent some great time listening his run. A lot of EU stations called him, and he really has a great RX.

That was it for the evening, in the morning I was drinking my morning cafe, spend another 2 hours switching between 50 and 500mW and made another 11 QSO's. As a conclusion - I have spent couple of nice hours, working some QSO's, listening good pile-ups, meet some old friends (and put their receiving abilities to the limits, sorry guys) and worked 36 milliwatt QSO's. My 50EE Total Power drops from 250 W down to 149,5 W.

Great FUN!

71's Jovan, T93W