ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: K3FIV
Operator(s): K3FIV
Station: K3FIV
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: CA CM88eu
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 72
40: 18
20: 90
15: 136
10: 33
------------
Total: 349 State/Prov = 52 Countries = 20 Total Score = 25,128
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
Contests are always "interesting" with 100W and a dipole, but Murphy made this
one especially so. Antenna is a Carolina Windom between 2 trees and about 30
feet up, with a remote antenna tuner mounted on a pole below the feedpoint, and
about 150 feet of coax back to the rig. Normally this works well, but this
weekend the SWR on the coax (to the tuner) would suddenly jump from 1:1 to much
higher. A few minutes later it would drop back to normal. Repeat every few
minutes. Power output dropped, but still seemed to work -- at least people
still answered me! Same behavior on all bands.
I hate intermittents, and this one is especially nasty. Obviously something is
wrong on the coax or in the tuner or at the antenna. But it was dark. It was
raining. And, since it's the rainy season here in California (24+ inches in
the last month or so), that remote tuner is currently in the middle of a
shallow lake.
It all worked great on Friday when I checked everything out...oh well.
So I just marched ahead, to see if anyone could hear me. I was surprised to
work ZS6EZ on 10M, who pulled me out of a pileup somehow -- great ears! Also
P49X on 80, with my power hovering around 20W at the time. Even some EU and
AF, and a bunch of pacific rim stations.
Great contest. Propagation wasn't as good as I expected with the SFI at 140+,
and the low bands were strange. Normally I work all the "locals" in CA on 80
at night, but what few signals I could hear were weak and almost unreadable.
But the Midwest and East were coming in strong. 40 was horrible.
Now, gotta go grab the Wellies and wade through the lake to see what that
antenna is doing....
73,
/Jack de K3FIV
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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