CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW
Call: W4EF
Operator(s): W4EF
Station: W4EF
Class: Single Op Assisted HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 06:10
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 310 State/Prov = 54 Countries = 26 Total Score = 72,640
Club: Southern California Contest Club
Comments:
Rig: Omni 6+
Amp: Drake L-7
TX Antenna: 56' top-loaded vertical
RX Antenna: RX 4 square
I had intended to do a more serious effort, but I caught a pretty wicked cold
Friday so I decided my time would be better spent leisurely doing some much
needed work in the shack and on the antennas (as well as resting). My homebrew
copy of W8JI's RX 4 Square is starting to play finally (a corroded fastener on
one of the elements was causing big problems), but the element tuning is still
off about 100 to 200 KHz. Hopefully, once I take a few turns off the matching
inductors and get the feedpoint impedance down close to 75 +j0 the array will
really come into its own.
Except for calling YE1C at sunrise on Saturday morning (to no avail), I didn't
start operating until 0400 UTC on Saturday night. Fortunately, this coincided
with a good opening to Europe so I was able to work a decent helping of 10
point multipliers including 3 all-time new 160M DXCC countries. After Europe
faded around 0800 UTC, so did I. I woke up around 1130 UTC and gave it another
go spurred on by my desire to find Oklahoma, Mississippi, Delaware and complete
WAS. I found AA1K in Delaware, but missed OK and MS. By 1300 UTC my cold
symptoms made sleeping seem like a much more attractive option than working the
contest, so I once again QSYed to the couch for another two hours. I got up
again at sunrise in hopes of one last shot at YE1C, but the band was in really
bad shape such that the few loud JAs I did hear were CQing in my face. In fact,
it was so bad that I looked out the window to see if the high winds from the
night before had toppled my TX antenna. At that point I think seeing the
antenna on the ground would have made me happier as at least then I would have
a good excuse for being so weak :-)
See you all next year.
Mike W4EF........
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