IARU HF World Championship
Call: NX5M
Operator(s): NX5M, KU5B, N5XJ
Station: NX5M
Class: M/S HP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Zones HQ Mults
-------------------------------------
160: 31 1 6 4
80: 130 10 20 17
40: 334 282 34 36
20: 392 710 39 42
15: 207 189 28 26
10: 40 17 9 5
-------------------------------------
Total: 1134 1209 136 130 Total Score = 1,821,302
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
Mad rush Friday evening to fix one of the two broken 40m antennas. Had time to
get one of them done but not the other.
Little did I know, and did not realize this until later in the day on Saturday
when we went to 15m the first time, the lower NW antenna in the stack was
failing. Only failing at high power so I must have a connection issue at the
feedpoint.
When I got to the point where we were no longer going to be needing 15m I
switched that radio over to 160 but when I changed the band switch on the Alpha
amp there was a loud "pop" and the amp turned off. Checked the fuses to find
them all good so I am not sure what caused that problem. Deeper investigation
into the inside of the amp did not reveal an issue but I did discover that a
mouse had gotten into the amp and removed some of the insulation from three
wires in amongst the filter caps. Word of warning: That spot on the back of
alphas where an external fan can be mounted, and if you think a mouse could
find its way into your shack, put some kind of screen over that opening to
prevent this from happening. I just got one of my amps back from service for
the very same reason it was was expensive.....4 figures expensive! Despite
this mouse issue, the uninsulated wire issue did not appear to have any direct
effect on the sudden pop and shut down of the amp. I powered the amp back up
and it worked just fine. Of course I discovered another problem once I tuned
it up on 160m. Why is the swr elevated on my 160m vertical? After the contest
was over I checked and it is resonating perfectly....but at 1700khz. Something
has changed, I just have to figure out what.
At about 0900z Saturday the top 20m yagi would not rotate back to the west so
here again is something that will need to be fixed.....none of this "on the
tower work" will get done in this 100+ degree Texas heat.
We certainly could have used another full-time operator. None of us were
rested for this contest and N5XJ had a work conflict come up that did not allow
him to get to the station until 1800z Saturday. Having had to get out of bed at
2am that morning we knew that he was going to be running on fumes by sunset.
However, he was able to hang in there until about 0400z before finally hitting
the wall for the next 5 hours. KU5B and I stayed awake the whole time except
for a 15 minute combat nap for both of us. There were times when each of us
could have grabbed an hour of sleep while one of the others was operating but
we tend to stay right there on top of things all the time.
I am going to agree with earlier comments by Jim, WX3B.....I think it would be
great to have a multi-two or multi-multi category in this contest. It does
tend to get a bit boring when only one band can be used at a given time and the
other ops get to sit on their hands.
Overall, this was the highest IARU score we have ever had so I consider that a
bit of a victory. It was a close race with N0NI.....you guys that did 2.5
million, we cannot compete with that from down here but that's ok. We are in
this for the fun anyway.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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