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[3830] CaQP W6ML(W6KC) SO(A)CntyExp HP

To: 3830@contesting.com, w6kc@arrl.net
Subject: [3830] CaQP W6ML(W6KC) SO(A)CntyExp HP
From: webform@b4h.net
Reply-to: w6kc@arrl.net
Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2019 06:44:10 +0000
List-post: <mailto:3830@contesting.com>
                    California QSO Party - 2019

Call: W6ML
Operator(s): W6KC
Station: W6ML

Class: SO(A)CntyExp HP
QTH: Mammoth Lakes (Mono)
Operating Time (hrs): 17

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs
--------------------
  160:            
   80:  120     14
   40:  129     36
   20:  308     52
   15:   60      3
   10:            
    6:            
    2:            
--------------------
Total:  617    105  Mults = 57  Total Score = 117,477

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Comments:

On the Sunday before the CQP weekend, I drove the 300 miles from our home QTH in
Santa Monica to Mammoth Lakes in Mono County. I like to keep simplifying my
temporary wire antenna setup so this year I put all four of my antennas at about
60 ft between the same two pine trees.  I ran my 15m and 20m dipoles end-to-end
and in the middle where the dipoles were connected with a short piece of guy
line, I attached my 40m and 80m inverted V's.

By Friday night I was all setup and glad that there was a CQP practice session
to make sure everything was good to go.  Unfortunately, when I got up Saturday
morning, I discovered that there was no power in my place or anywhere else in
town.    

Due to an equipment failure at SCE, the power was shut off in the town of
Mammoth Lakes and neighboring cities at about 3am Saturday morning. As it turned
out the power was not restored until almost 2pm.  Since CQP began at 9am local
time, I lost most of 5 hours of prime operating time.  However, I was able to
get on the air for some of that power down time by running jumpers from the
battery in my car parked just outside of the window of the room where my radio
was located. It turned out to be a good test of my emergency preparedness.  

I had a brought a second radio (FT-991A) with me that I use when I'm traveling. 
It was already setup to interface with my laptop for logging and it had a set of
alligator clips for a 12V connection.  I could only get about 50 watts output
running about 14 ft. of cable to my car battery, but I still made 115 QSOs in 2+
hours of operating and then my laptop battery died.

I logged 5 QSOs by hand on paper and then fortunately the power was restored.
With the power back, I still needed to re-key all 120 QSOs into the logging
program on my desktop PC.  This used up another 30 minutes, so I finally made my
first QSO with the benefit of my amplifier at 2139Z, 5 hours and 39 minutes
after the CQP start time.

In addition to all the power problems, I had very a high noise level on all the
bands and it was difficult to get any real runs going.  I ended up with 500 QSOs
less than last year and missed ND for the sweep. It was still fun and Mono
County in the beautiful High Sierra is always a great place to operate in the
CQP. 

73,   Jim W6ML (W6KC)

K3S, AL80B Amp, 20M & 15M Dipoles, 80M & 40M Inverted V's all at 60Ft
plus 8,000ft Above Sea Level


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