North American QSO Party, SSB
Call: VE7FO
Operator(s): VE7FO
Station: VE7FO
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Vancouver
Operating Time (hrs): 9
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 1 1
80: 27 12
40: 44 25
20: 172 43
15: 1 1
10: 1 1
-------------------
Total: 246 83 Total Score = 20,418
Club: British Columbia DX Club
Team:
Comments:
Almost missed this one due to station maintenance issues. The old PIII computer
has been getting pretty flaky so I bought a new one with a speed rating 6X
better than the old one. Not that I need a faster one, the old one ran TR just
fine. The new one doesn't and I haven't yet figured out why. The problem with
the old one is that the main monitor will abruptly, and very often, display only
a very bright horizontal line half way up the screen. When this happens I
immediately shut off the monitor so I don't get a screen burn. It also crashes
a lot. For today's contest I switched the main monitor video to the 2nd
monitor. This is ergonomically displeasing for two reasons. One is that it is
mounted above the main monitor which means that I have to tilt my head up, which
is hard on the neck. The other is that the 2nd monitor doesn't like being at
the end of 15 or so ft of video cable which results in ghosting around every
character.
My Heil headset has been dropped on the floor one too many times which has
resulted in the mic boom attachment being broken and the boom just dangles from
the normal attachment point by the mic wire. In a previous contest I tried
holding it in place with duct tape. Not only did it not hold it, it left cruddy
looking adhesive all over the outside of the left ear phone. Today I managed to
figure out a way to re-attach it so that it would work the way it did before.
Unfortunately, while the headset was plugged in to the jacks on the side of the
desk, I got up from the chair and, not realizing that the wire was wrapped
around my ankle, ripped the mic wire right out of the 3.5 mm plug.
Oh well, I can reattach the plug. To save a little time, I didn't de solder the
remaining bits of wire from the old plug, I attached a new one. In the old days
I used to think of Switchcraft stuff as not being really professional grade.
Compared to the garbage I now find myself dealing with, I've concluded that a
dollar spent on off shore plugs and jacks is a dollar wasted. In this case,
when I connected the mic cable to the new plug and tried it out, no signal got
transferred to the rig. After a few tests I discovered that the connection
between the solder tag for the mic line and the plug tip was open circuit.
Well, I had another identical plug so I decided to use that. Before I did, I
checked the solder tag to tip connection and it was fine. After soldering the
mic wires to it, it wasn't fine, it was open circuit. Without going into the
details, suffice to say that I found a way to beat on the connector to make it
work. By this time, NAQP had been running for 3 hours.
Now, you folks who solve problems 130 ft above the ground at 30 below with a 20
knot wind in half an hour will find this stuff to be pretty mickey mouse.
However, to one who was contesting 50 years ago, small stuff like this looms
pretty large and, at least in my case, makes one think that it's more bother
than it's worth.
Fortunately, I persevered, although rather grumpily.
I ran some domestic prop predictions on Fri night to see when to take my 2 hours
of breaks. The message was, for VE7, to take off the first 2 hours. After
that, for a good number of the 15 paths I plot, SNR on at least 1 band would be
at least 10 dB for SSB bandwidth. Hah!! Not so. Still, the predictions for
the New England states seemed to work out and I think I did better than I
usually do for the NE mults by pointing the beam that way on 20 and trying to
run in the 0000 to 0200Z hours
In general, it seemed to me that activity was less then in previous years. No
matter what band or what time, it was easy to find a place to call CQ where
there was little to no audible activity. I did find that when I asked a
responder to my CQ how the QRM was on me that it was usually bad.
In past domestic contests, I would simply point the old TH3 tribander a little
south of east and pretty much leave it there for the duration of the contest.
This time I found myself pointing it at around 075 deg for the NE/maritime
stations and then pointing it somewhat S of E to get the Fl stns to hear me.,
A few high points
Any time someone tried to move me, I moved. This resulted in a rare occurrence
for me. K7RL and I, at his suggestion, did all the bands. This is only the
fourth time that I have ever worked the same station on all bands from 160 to 10
in a contest.
I don't do 160 very well. I have an inverted L that doesn't work very well -
best DX doesn't include any stations east of the Mississippi. For some reason
which I don't understand, I now get a lot of RF feedback which badly distorts my
audio. Oddly, it wasn't a problem when I worked K7RL but when I tried to meet
K7NV I had to back off the RF power about 50% before the monitored audio was
half way intelligible and, even then, it was throwing black, amorphous blobs up
on the monitor. I tired to meet a couple of other folks on 160 but K7RL was the
only success.
I haven't had this experience on 160 before. Another new experience was that I
could work 40 to my heart's content without bothering the TV viewers upstairs.
This is REALLY different.
Very late in the contest, I don't remember if it was 40 or 75 but I think it was
75, I picked a spot for running. I asked my usual 3 times "Is the freq in
use?", heard no response and hit the auto CQ. After the first CQ I heard a weak
W9 CQing on the same freq so I stopped, thinking he was there before me. Then I
heard a voice equivalent of QRL? Thinking that the W9 had heard me and was
being polite, although his signal was somewhat stronger than before, I said,
"No, go ahead." K6VVA, sounding somewhat bemused, said, "Thank you'" and
started CQing. Broke me right up.
I got the distinct feeling that I was the only really active VE7. Not used to
being thanked by guys in Ut for being there. To my astonishment, I see that I
worked Ut as many times as Pa and Va.
All in all, it was pretty tough. I checked 15 pretty often and 10 less often.
Nada except an XE calling CQ DX. Still, I'm glad I stayed in the chair, even
though the score is pretty miserable. As always, no matter how poor the number
of Qs, there's always the incentive to reach whatever level I've thought could
be achieved.
It was fun to work Arnie, N6Don Henley er... N6Hotel California. When I first
got back into the game in 2000 after an absence of 25 - 30 yrs, I spent a lot of
time in a CW contest trying to sort out NH7/N6HC. He must have sent his call 10
times. What a patient man.
73 everyone and sure hope I get the blasted computer working soon. Thanks for
the Qs.
Jim VE7FO
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