Ontario QSO Party - 2020
Call: VA3RAC
Operator(s): VE3NNT
Station: VA3RAC
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FN14cm
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Mults
---------------------------
160: 34 29
80: 147 51 69
40: 223 29 77
20: 92 64 45
15:
10:
6:
2:
---------------------------
Total: 496 144 220 Total Score = 258,940
Club: Contest Club Ontario
Comments:
Some of you might be wondering why you didn't hear me on Sunday morning. Some of
you have great scores. All I have is a great story, just not a happy one.
Operating remote has it's challenges. The COVID lockdown has its pros and cons.
The benefit is that many more stations were on the air, which offered an
opportunity to break some scoring records. The con is that with everyone at home
watching Netflix, the internet is struggling to keep up.
Everything started out well for me Saturday afternoon, although I never found a
sweet spot on SSB. I probably wasn't on the right frequencies to attract
attention. Saturday evening was another story. My station is set up for SO2R and
I can use 2 keyboards when I run my Flex SmartSDR CAT and DAX from my remote
location with the Maestro. With the internet jitter/delay (often exceeding 1
second) and dropped packets that would last something like 15 seconds, either
the Maestro or the CAT and DAX software would lose connection with the radio.
Then it took 5 minutes to get everything up and running again. It got to the
point around 7 or 8 pm that I could only make 1 contact between lost
connections. I took a dinner break. When I returned, I decided to give up on the
2 keyboard SO2R and instead did a remote desktop connection to the station PC
and ran CAT and DAX there. That was better since they didn't rely on the
internet connection to stay alive.
I got up Sunday morning and decided to start with 75M SSB. Strangely, my
amplifier kept complaining about SWR exceeded, even though it looked low enough
when I hit the tune button. Then I went to 20 CW and heard VA3DF calling CQ and
got ready to call him, but something happened. First, the radio complained that
I was out of band, and I couldn't get rid of that TX inhibit until I powered the
radio off and on again. Then I discovered that I had lost connection to my
Antenna Genius switch, so I had no antennas. There was only one solution … to
drive to the cottage to see what was going on.
Now the story gets worse. When I arrived, I discovered that my 80M Yagi was
tilted. I went up the tower and saw that 3 of the 4 bolts holding the boom to
the mast plate had sheered. The antenna was hanging on by a thread. So I came
down, got a sturdy tree strap and went back up to strap the boom to the mast so
the antenna wouldn't fall when the last bolt breaks. Then it was 2 pm and OQP
was over.
Next was a call to Guthrie's to try to arrange an emergency visit to reattach
the boom to the mast plate … hopefully later this week.
Now you know why you didn't hear VA3RAC today.
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