7th Area QSO Party
Call: K7EAR
Operator(s): WA5Y, K7IA, N2IC, N5BG, W5CF, W7WGW, K7COR, K7LON, N7XEU, KB5ZKE,
KB7CSE, AA7NW, N7AM, KB7ZZY, N7CSL, N5IA
Station: K7EAR
Class: Cnty Exped M/M LP
QTH: AZ GHM/GLE
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160: 0 0 0
80: 276 116 0
40: 820 360 0
20: 914 1242 78
15: 284 26 0
10: 0 16 6
6: 0 0 0
2: 0 0 0
----------------------------
Total: 2294 1760 84 Mults = 70 Total Score = 745,360
Club: Eastern AZ ARS
Comments:
Building upon two years of experience, the Eastern Arizona Amateur Radio
Society, Inc. (EAARS) improved considerably in many aspects of operating in the
7QP this year. With new particpants, both experienced and contest beginners
joining with the seasoned crew, a good time was had by all.
The weather cooperated for our high desert experience somewhat better than it
had the past two years. It was warmer, and with less wind during the setup
day. However, the winds on the operating day did reach 35-40 miles per hour
for 5-6 hours and equaled the winds of two years ago.
The addition of the digital option this year by the 7QP organizers prompted
EAARS to invest in an all band vertical for a digital station. It was
anticipated that the cross polarization from the main station antennas and the
low power of the digital transmissions would keep inter-station interference at
a minimum. Suffice it to say that the SSB station receivers suffered some
degradation while the digital transmitter operated.
Plans are already underway to mitigate that problem for next year. Our budding
digital operators didn't make a bunch of contacts but learned a whole lot about
how to use the modes in a contest environment. Watch out for them next year.
They will ceome a real asset.
The installation of the club's 4 portable towers and antennas had no problems.
The 2.4 gHz Internet connection worked well as usual and the 5.8 gHz link for
the logging network, connecting the CW and SSB operating locations, operated
without a burp for the entire contest period.
Two problems did show up which caused the CW team to leave a lot on the table.
The genset for the CW operations intermittently would cut out for a couple of
seconds, allowing the voltage to drop enough to cause the logging PCs to shut
off. UPSs don't like small generator power, so besides fixing the genset
problem we have to devise an effective power backup system for next year.
The power dropouts also caused another problem which was not discovered until
very late in the contest. It appears that an unorderly shutdown (power going
off)of one of the new transceivers causes the radio to be in the condition of
the last orderly shutdown when it turned on again. Because the last orderly
shutdown of the radio had been after a QRP schedule the night before the
contest, each time the radio was turned on after the power bumps, it apparently
came up in QRP power out mode.
The power out meter display automatically follows the QRP or higher power
settings of the TX PO so the operators did not see a discrepancy until band
conditions late in the day and early evening made something appear wrong. So,
most of the contest period the 20 Meter and 80 Meter CW position was operating
at less than 10 Watts. So much for Mr. Murphy coming to call on us.
The QRN on the low bands was quite heavy but was not as bad as two years ago.
But it was a far cry from last year when at the end of the contest 75 Meter SSB
sounded like 2 Meter FM it was so quiet. Last year we made 434 and 132 Qs on 80
CW and 75 SSB respectively. The QRN this year limited those stations to 276 Qs
on CW and 116 Qs on SSB.
15 Meters was slightly better than last year. There was some decent sporadic E
but no F layer contacts at all. Ten Meters even showed it still exists with a
handful of E layer contacts.
Again 20 Meters was the money band. The CW ops and the SSB ops were in a very
tight race all day long until 0100. The Q count was never more than 15 apart,
with the lead changing a number of times. About 0100 the CW band ran out of
stations to work. The later discovered QRP problem probably contributed to
much of the problem that late in the day. The SSB station continued working
them at a good clip until 0400.
The high rate hour for the whole operation was the very first hour, from 1300
to 1400 Z. We put 410 Qs in the log during that hour.
EAARS thanks the stations everywhere that called in to our stations. As usual
the California operators led the way with 562 in the log. Texas came in 2nd
with 282 entries. Oregon was 3rd with 258, Washington 4th with 250, and Utah
5th with 164.
A great big thank you also goes to the ladies who braved the wind to setup the
kitchen for the evening meal. It doesn't get much better than that; operating
a contest while eating grilled hamburgers and home made potatoe salad.
A total of 21 DXCC entities were logged making it easy to achieve the 10 DX
mults needed. Domestic mults were up by 4 from last year. We achieved WAS in
about 8 hours. Only the rare Canadian mults were not heard or worked.
Thanks again to the 7QP organizers and the many, many ops in the Indiana QP and
the NEQP who called in. It was one blast of a day.
After 5 hours of sleep, we were taking it all down at sunup. There was
improvement in this aspect also, as we were totally loaded up and gone from the
site in 5 hours time.
73, and we will see you all next year.
Milt, N5IA
Chairman, EAARS 7QP operation
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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