ARRL DX Contest, CW
Call: WO1N
Operator(s): WO1N
Station: WO1N
Class: SO Unlimited LP
QTH: EMA
Operating Time (hrs): 11
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 0 0
80: 155 51
40: 185 58
20: 65 54
15: 104 62
10: 108 53
-------------------
Total: 617 278 Total Score = 514,578
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Station : FTdx5000, C3-SS@38', 40M dipole@50', 80M Vertical dipole, N1MM+
Best laid plans, Ha! A full time effort was planned but it didn't happen.
No, it wasn't the Friday visit to Moms and Mom-in-law which resulted in
6+ hours of shoveling/snowblowing. It wasn't the unplanned doctor visit
for the Mom-in-law that extended late into the afternoon (she's OK). It
wasn't the 1.5 hour ride home that normally takes 45 minutes. It wasn't
arriving in the driveway right at the start. It wasn't the total exhaustion.
Nothing a shower/nap and something to eat wouldn't take care of.
It wasn't the neighbor showing up at our front door hysterical that her
husband had passed out after 3 hours of shoveling his roof. Please call 911.
OK, we can do that.
She reports a night in the hospital and all he's OK. I guess high-blood
pressure and dehydration don't play well together.
It wasn't N1MM Classic crashing without even being able to issue a key stroke
or access any menu item after logging about 15 S&P Qs after many years of
problem free operation.
Nope. None of that. That was the easy stuff.
I sat down at the radio 3 hours after the start only to find S9+10 dB line
noise on all bands. Grrr! While there had been hints of this in the past few
weeks, it was never like it was during the weekend.
I speculated that when the forecasted snow started it would stop, and lo and
behold about 1/2 hr after the weather moved in on Saturday afternoon, it
stopped. In the interim I had loaded up N1MM+. Very nice!
The serious effort had already been shelved, so I operated when I felt like it.
Had some decent runs on 80M and 40M into late Saturday night/early morning while
the fire hose was silent. Slept. Restarted about 9:30 local Sunday morning. Got
about 30 minutes into a run frequency on 10M and the damn line noise came back,
full force. Of course it did, the snow had stopped about an hour earlier.
The FTdx5000 has a pretty effective noise blanker but with the usual artifacts.
It made S&P possible but I could not run when the fire hose was active.
Really impressive on the SM-5000 spectrum scope.
I'm just blown away how sweet N1MM+ is. Completely painless switch-over /
startup. Great look and feel. Nice job, guys.
CU in the next one,
Ken
WO1N
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