The adventures of Brian/Ryan/Ron.
The story begina about a month ago when Brian, the 13 year old son of
the lady who keeps our kids was visiting the house. He and his cousin
Greg talked to a couple of guys on 20 ssb one night and got interested in
contesting and radio in general. Both are 13 and 8th graders .
I told them about the NAQP SSB contets and invited them over. They seemed
excited at the time. I was going to remind Brian last weekend about
the contest but HE reminded me first. A good sign.
Saturday, contest day. Brian arrives 30 minutes before the contest w/o
Greg. This is actually good for me cause I might get some operating time.
I explain what the objectives are and how to make qso's etc. Contest
starts on 20 with a good rate S&P'ing. I find the new station, type the
call into the computer, hit the footswitch and Brian calls the station.
station comes back, I hit the footswitch and Brian gives the report
Brian in Alabama. The other station usually said thanks Ryan (or Ron)
QRZ? We then spent the next few minutes trying to correct our name
with the station we just worked. Brian was getting frustrated and was
having problems with the phonetics for his name. I finally told
him not to worry about correcting his name (we call him Ron now anyway)
lets just work as many as we can.
Most of the guys we worked went out of their was to thank him and I
Really appreciate that. It makes it much easier selling the hobby
and contesting to new guys (especially scared 13 year olds).
We ended up running out of guys to work on 10/15/20 in the first 3 hours
since all we were doing was S&P'ing. I did have a brief run on 10
when Brian took a break. 10/15/20 were great from here and I'd
really wished I had done a single op. (OK that's selfish I know but
conditions were REAL GOOD).
I had been asking Brian if he was ready to CQ and he would always say
NO without thinking too long. I told him we were close to running out
of new stations to work and our best way to break the Alabama multi op
record was to cq. (I used the KE4GY/KC4ZV Aug 95 SSB NAQP as the
"record" since I had the NCJ right there) He got real interested
in the record and wanted to know more about how the scoring was done.
We took another break while I explained the scoring system and how to
read the score window in NA. He let me CQ for 10 minutes while he
observed the technique on the 2nd headphones and then he took over.
It took a while for him to get the hang of it but he did well after
30 minutes of cq'ing. Brian would get excited when the * would
appear by the new mult on the screen. The contest rocks on for a while.
My kids ages 4 and 2 like to play in the shack and basement while I'm
contesting. They also get to see Brian every day during the week
and he plays with them alot. At one point, my daughter was sitting
in my lap and saying King Charlie 4 Zulu Victor about 1/2 second behind
Brian while he cq'ed. At about the same time my 2 year old son started
screaming cause he couldn't get inmy lap at the same time. Of course
all of this was heard in the headphones going out over 40 meters.
Kind of gives multi op a new meaning.
We ordered pizza and took a dinner break an discussed strategy. The
"record" was 74k and we had about 35k at the time. He wasn't sure
we would make it even with 6 hours of contesting to go. To make a
long story short, Brian had to be home at 9:30 and we were still
about 8k short of the "record" I dropped him off and promised him
I would break the record. I think he was disappointed he couldn't
be there to "see it happen" As I got back on 20 meters which was
STILL open, I think I prayed the rig wouldn't blow up so I could
get over 74k. 20 was fantastic and I had 3 85+ hours in a row on
the low bands to get over 74k.
The "funny" thing that happened was when I moved WD5ABC in MS to 160,
the antenna didn't work and I ended up out in the yard with a flashlight
at 11:00 pm fixing the thing. This is "funny" because in my Introduction
to Contesting Forum at the Huntsville Hamfest the next day, one of the
first "tips" I told all 8 people there was "to make sure everything
works BEFORE the contest" The 15 minutes I spent fixing the antenna
cost me breaking 700 q's in the contest.
Thanks for all the q's and hope to cu in the sprints. Here is the
breakdown
160 26 x 15 s9+ noise level
80 100 x 30 good high band conditions hurt 75 meters here I think
40 184 x 48
20 263 x 57 8p6 Calls Brian for his first DX QSO
15 67 x 27 If we had cq'ed earlier, the 15/10 numbers would
10 57 x 24 have been MUCH better.
697 x 201 = 140,097
Would have been VERY interesting to see how 2 experienced contest ops
would have done from here with one transmitter. Had a blast anyway
and Brian was real excited that we had broken the 74k mark when I told
him the next day.
73
Greg KC4ZV
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