ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: W2UP
Operator(s): W2UP
Station: W2UP
Class: SO CW LP
QTH: CO
Operating Time (hrs): 19
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW: 357 96
SSB:
-------------------
Total: 357 96 Total Score = 137,088
Club: Grand Mesa Contesters of Colorado
Comments:
Several weeks ago, Chuck, W0DLE, asked me if I'd like to operate his station
remotely, using a TS480 and remoterig. I had operated there (onsite) last year
for SS and it's an excellent station. I had a 3 el Steppir at 55 ft and a 5 el
monobander at 35 ft for 10m. They were switched via web browser. We kept the
Steppir bidirectional, for JA and SA, and the monobander pointed E/NE. It's
about 80 miles from my QTH in a remote location in the Rockies at 9500 ft ASL.
There are no public utilities in the area, so the station ois powered primarily
by wind and solar, with a generator for backup. Another local, WB0GAZ, has
done some casual remote operating there and did the set up in the remoterig
modem. As it turned out, we did have some glitches over the weekend - more
below. On to the contest...
I looked up the record for SOLP/CW for Colorado. It was set in 1991 with about
1100 QSOs. I thought breaking it would be easy, since last year, I operated
from my condo with a balcony dipole and racked up 800+ QSOs. Wow, what a
difference a year makes! Condx were just terrible, especially the first 24
hours. There were scattered, focal, E-skip openings on and off. Seems the
path from Colorado to Alabama was open the most often, followed by W1/VE1. On
Sunday, I was very surprised to work 2 GMs at about their sunset, followed by
another 10-15 Europeans. I had a small JA run shortly after JA sunrise, a
couple of hours before the end of the contest.
Best ears award goes to K7BG for pulling me out of the noise for the MT mult.
I called K6LL for a while, without success, but later caught a few others in
AZ. Never heard WA, MN, NM (N2IC?) or VE7! And missed a few others like ND and
DE. Worked my HST teammate, KE3X, in the final hour for the DC mult. Called
AH0BT for the last 15 minutes of the contest without success.
Regarding the remote operation, we had a few glitches. First, the TS480 lost
xmit power a few times - possibly an intermittent or cold solder joint, as it
worked fine once the radio was warm. Second, the CW transmission was flaky at
times, dropping dits and sending long dahs. We suspect the problem is dropped
packets on the Comcast network, as I talked with another station who has
similar problems with his remote operation (using Comcast on one end). Dave,
WB0GAZ, never experienced this and he uses DSL with a different ISP than me.
Lastly, despite the nearest power line being 7 miles away, there were some
noise issues related to a power inverter and possibly some lighting as well.
Thanks for the Qs and putting up with the erratic CW.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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