ARRL September VHF QSO Party
Call: W1XM
Operator(s): KB1CGZ AG4ZP W1PLL W1GSL WG1Z KD1KY M0LSY
Station: W1XM
Class: Multi-Op HP
QTH: FN42ki Cambridge MA
Operating Time (hrs):
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 83 12
2: 74 14
222: 25 9
432: 35 9
903: 9 5
1.2: 14 6
2.3: 7 4
3.4:
5.7:
10G:
24G:
-------------------
Total: 247 59 Total Score = 22,066
Club:
Comments:
Crummy conditions. Aurora was not visible optically, and did not produce
appreciable enhancement on Saturday.
Weak staffing on Sunday...we were not running in the morning or overnight.
Six is always bad for us and this contest was no exception. Briefly open to
Florida for us on Saturday and not at all on Sunday.
Our second contest with 1kW (ok, 900W?) on 2m. Still very effective. We should
concentrate more effort on 2m, I think, as 6m continues to be super-noisy for
us (proximity to City of Boston). I imagine we could have pushed up the 2m Q
count substantially more than we reduced the 6m Q count by focusing some
operator resources on 2m that were instead on 6m.
Microwave...ugh. In a pleasant change from previously, nothing broke during the
contest, only shortly before.
The week prior, we discovered our FLEX1500, which drives 903-2304, gave up the
ghost, and was not visible as a USB device. Replacing with a spare FLEX1500,
and then discovered our sequencer was stuck in transmit.
Because of some confusion between preparedness and idiocy, transverters got
hard keyed down in transmit mode for two days. "Oops."
Replaced sequencer on Saturday, and surprise, transverters still all remained
keyed down. Turns out the common PTT line on them was pulled low by a fault in
our W1GHZ Miniverter.
Miniverter's PTT line is an unprotected FET (Q1: BS170), and it failed shorted
(well, 2.7ohm resistance gate-to-anything). Conveniently, Paul's design has a
second BS170 as a PTT output (Q3) which we are not using. So we managed to
resolder that in place of Q1, and finally we had 903, 1296, and 2304 up by
Saturday evening.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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