ARRL 160-Meter Contest
Call: N0VD
Operator(s): N0VD
Station: N0VD
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: AZ
Operating Time (hrs): 5
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 250 Sections = 66 Countries = 6 Total Score = 33,396
Club: Arizona Outlaws Contest Club
Comments:
It all started on Saturday night with "Hey! There's an old friend from the
DFW Contest Group. I'll give him a point." Then it went to "Ohhh,
there are lots of signals and the band is quiet, I'll just hand out a few more
points." Then it became "I'll just make 25 Qs and call it good".
From there it was like "I wonder if I can run with LP". That opened
the door to "I'll make 100 Qs and be done". Which progressed to
"Hunh, 100 Qs was easy, let's do 150". Then it was 200 and finally
250!
Backstory: there was no intention of getting on for this contest. A few weeks
ago I learned that there is something funky in 160/80M antenna system (shunt fed
tower) in that after I call CQ for about 5 minutes with HP, my SWR goes bananas.
I thought it might be that the driven element on the XM-240 loading tophat may
not be grounded when it was not selected as the active antenna, so a couple of
weeks ago I re-arranged my switching network to ensure that would grounded when
using 80 or 160M. Unfortunately, grounding the driven element didn't solve the
problem. My guess now is that the balun may be the culprit. But I was happy
that whatever the issue is, it seems to be stable at LP. I was pretty amazed at
how well everyone was hearing this little pea shooter. Apologies to PJ2T for
the repeats. I kept thinking "P1 something? That's not a valid
prefix" never expecting PJ2T to call me!
Huge thanks to everyone that gave me a call. It was certainly fun being
"fresh meat" on Saturday evening!
73
Kelly - N0VD
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