7th Call Area QSO Party - 2020
Call: K7RU
Operator(s): N9ADG KA7MOM
Station: K7RU
Class: M/S LP
QTH: WAISL
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160: 15
80: 152 85
40: 338 4
20: 385 50
15:
10:
6:
2:
----------------------------
Total: 890 139 0 Mults = 63 Total Score = 185,535
Club:
Comments:
Wow, what a contest! I convinced my quarantined family to go to our cabin on
Camano Island, WA and even got my wife, KA7MOM, to make a few phone contacts!
"If I'd known how well I could do, I'd have tried harder."
Conditions were simply great from my perspective. Lots of stations on, and where
I was, with little noise on any band. Listening to 80 meters was really
enjoyable for a change, and I even coerced the tuner on the Flexradio 6600 to
use the 80 meter dipole as a 160 meter antenna, getting as far east as PA.
Highlights were the conditions, getting KA7MOM to make a few contacts, being
called by some EU stations, getting heard by some EU stations on the first call
with 100 watts, working some familiar calls, and trying to match K7BTW's rate
(watching via ContestOnlineScores) in the last four hours of the contest.
In this time of social distancing, Murphy wasn't invited to our family multi-op,
but he deliver a Sabrent USB to serial adapter that doesn't do the right thing
with CTS/RTS signaling to foul up Phone footswitch operation with newbie
operators. An old TU-9s USB/Serial came to the rescue, but not before the other
family members had to get back home.
Our youngest son, a 17 year old HS senior and the only unlicensed child of our
three, *said* he'd get on the radio and give it a try, but ... reneged at the
last moment. Next time, maybe, or perhaps he'll join the W3AEQ club at school
this fall. Yeah, right! KA7MOM got on for a few S&P phone contacts, but the
footswitch was a problem. They both couldn't stay for the last 7 hours of the
contest.
Things to improve for next time: Figure out how to hear some sort of local
sidetone out of the Flexradio when sending CW via SmartSDR. Maybe I haven't read
enough to figure out how to do this, but it would help to stop fat-fingered
macros from going out undetected. Maybe N1MM Logger feeding a virtual serial
port TEE that feeds both SmartSDR's CAT winkey emulation AND a local winkeyer
just for the confirmation of the right messages being sent.
Oh, one other fun nerdy thing. I was calling CQ on 80m CW, and heard a varying
tone, and on the spectrum display saw a carrier "homing in" on my
frequency with a vertical-axis sinusoid. I thought to myself: "Someone is
zero-beating my frequency with some vintage rig. Bet I know who that is!"
and sure enough, was called by W7DRA. Wow he's good at that- got it in one
"cycle!" on the display.
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