Florida QSO Party - 2020
Call: W4LT
Operator(s): W4LT
Station: W4LT
Class: SOABCW HP
QTH: HIL/WCF
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
40: 451
20: 456
15: 33
10: 2
--------------------
Total: 942 0 CW Mults = 77 Ph Mults = 0 Total Score = 144,452
Club: Florida Contest Group
Comments:
Flagship station of the Man Cave Contest Consortium!
Rig - K-Line @ 500w
Ant - A3S @ 40ft -- 2 half waves in phase at 38ft (40m)
Also managing the N4TP remote operation.
Thursday overnight to Friday, we had strong T-Storms. Lighting strike close to
the N4TP location scrambled the hastily set up Flex 6400 and its control
peripherals. Off to the park where the club facility is located, was allowed in
(all city parks are closed for Virus Apocalypse) with my gloves and mask. Reset
all system, but still couldnt get Flex on line. Returned Saturday morning and
fixed the problem (botched SmartLink setup). Lost 2 hours Sat morning.
Coming home from fixing the Flex, getting out of the car, I slipped on a tree
root and twisted my left ankle. Hurts when I walk or stand... More inspiration
to keep my butt in the chair! Doesnt hurt when Im sitting working stations!
Now on to my station... Had not used it in a bit; Been using the Flex... The K3
must have gotten jealous. None of my USB ports would work correctly for Rig
control and keying. Took me another hour to fix (inside a WINDOWS UPDATE, too!
Forgot to TURN IT OFF!) and off we go.
Problem with the Flex losing internet connection Saturday afternoon. Went off
air to fix that remotely. Turns out the UPS the Flex was on was also servicing a
Yaesu Fusion node transceiver. The UPS couldn't support both radios
concurrently... Turned off the node remotely. Kudos to KX4TT who braved the
Virus Apocalypse for going to the clubhouse to reset the breakers on the UPS.
Back to my station. Several computer lock ups due to virtual ports from Flex
(that I was not using locally) and my local microHAM peripherals using Eltima
virtual ports wouldn't play nice together. Removed all Flex from computer,
manually edited the computer registry of all bogus drivers then rebooted,
installed the damned update so the computer would quit bitching at me to do
it... Now all is now working well.
Lost the amp on Saturday morning in the middle of a nice run. K3 dutifully
reverted to full exciter power, so worked a bunch of stations on 100w. Cause
was a tripped breaker in house power panel. XYL unknowingly plugged in a toaster
(on same circuit as my amp feed), fixed that by removing the toaster. No toast
until the end of the contest!
>From there, everything worked well. Not the greatest condx. 15 was open at
1409z Saturday with my signal at KO7SS at 24dB, but no takers. My usual band
opening beacons, the FT8 signals, were on 15m, lots of them, but no CW! W9EN was
the only one to try 15m and answered my many CQ's, then nada.
The fool that I am, I moved to 10m. It too was open as well at 1500z, some FT8
signals, but nobody there except for K5IB in TX followed by my neighbor across
Tampa Bay, WB4TDH. Those were all the 10m QSO's for the contest.
One request: PLEASE don't spot the State and County on stations you work! Just
the callsign is enough! Pretty please? Bunch of dupes due to the /county and
/state on spots that wasted a lot of time.
Another fun time in the FQP!
73 and thanks for all the really terrific pileups!
Lu W4LT
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