apology from a casual contester

[K9AIM]

Last night I was trying to do some DX fills and get my 40m LoTW confirmed up to 100. 
I heard CE3FZ on 40m working the WAE contest and saw I had him LoTW confirmed on another band so I decided to work him.

I could not get through and I thought maybe I was off whatever freq he was listening on and maybe he had a very narrow filter  so I tried and tried to call him...;

Then today it dawned on me that while I had looked up the exchange for the WAE contest I hadn't done my duty and learned what the gist of the contest was.  Worked All Europe, duh.  Contacts MUST be between European and non-European hams.   

I feel stupid of course, and am sorry for my QRM.  Only good thing is I am probably pretty week with my 100 watts and G5RV.

My take-away lesson is that if I am going to dive into contests to work DX, I need to do the minimum homework of finding out what the contest actually is and not merely what the exchange I should send is.  last night, I was definitely not the brightest bulb in the house!

[K0IZ]

If that's your only operating mistake, you're ahead of me!

[AD9DX]

I tried that last night too.  Looks like you are not the only one with egg on your face 

[KE4YOG]

I have done worse. Had the tuner set bypass for the dummy load. I heard a very faint signal on 20 meters with my FT817. I tuned up the TS-480HX and called and called and I wonder why I didnt get a contact. Then was the time on 40 I tuned the whole band and every one sounded like they were speaking a strange language I didnt recognize. That is what happens when you have the wrong side band setting and the humour goes on and on.

[K3TN]

That happens to everyone. I made about 300 QSOs in the WAE contest and still called a 7Z (Asia) and a CR6 (Africa) forgetting they are not in EU. The contesting software (N1MM) I use would have stopped me from doing so if I had entered the call in but I hadn't.

Same happens in state QSO parties when someone out of state is trying to call CQ to work into the state and gets calls from out of the state - not a big deal.

73 John K3TN