North American QSO Party, SSB - January
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: K1IR
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: MA
Operating Time (hrs): 1
Remote Operation
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 12 9
80: 6 5
40: 96 26
20:
15:
10:
-------------------
Total: 114 40 Total Score = 4,560
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Team:
Comments:
As I began to fill out this 3830 report, I realized that I screwed up the
exchange. I was operating K1IR in MA remotely, but I gave my QTH in the exchange
as NH. Definitely a remote-operating-newbie lid move. Sorry!
FWIW, my excuse is that this was only my second remote operation. My first was
operating M2 with K1IR and NN1C using K1IR's station in MA, and in that case we
used K1IR's call, name and QTH. Jim and I agreed that this time I should use my
call in case he wanted to operate SO under his call. I should have used Jim's
QTH in the exchange, but force of habit got the best of me. It's what I sent and
what I logged, so hopefully no one will be penalized but me.
Obviously, this wasn't a serious effort. I operated all but an hour or so of
NAQP CW as part of the K1IR M2 team, and the remote stuff worked quite well
(except for a couple of annoying audio artifacts I fixed after the contest) and
I hoped to do a few hours of operating in the SSB segment to see how well remote
phone works.
You would think switching from CW to phone would be simple, but as usual Murphy
struck. Jim's availability to help troubleshoot the remote station was limited
on Saturday, so it took a while to get going. The first problem was not being
able to connect to the remote station at all. Turns out Jim's ISP had changed
his IP address since the previous weekend. Once we got that straightened out, I
couldn't get any response from the mic -- no transmission indicated on the local
K3/0. Tried a bunch of configuration changes in the remoterig, to no avail. When
Jim got back to the station he quickly found that the mic cable was unplugged at
the remote radio. After a few simple config changes Jim pronounced my audio was
good and I was off to the races at 0314z. Just a short time left in the contest,
but enough to take the racecar out for a test run.
It's been a while since I've done any SSB, so it took a few minutes to get
acclimated. Then the 10-minute meter jumped to 250+. I was amazed how well
remote SSB works -- no delays, no distortion. Just like being there. Guess it
shouldn't be a surprise, as we've been using VOIP for telephone service at my
house for years. Alas, the rate slowed within 45 minutes, forcing me to 80 and
the 160, where things were pretty slow already. Nevertheless, it was fun!
So, my first to forays into remote operating were successful, thanks to K1IR and
NN1C, who loaned me a remoterig, WinKeyer and K3/0. I like it enough to invest
in a pair of remoterigs to use with my K3's so I can do remote SO2R (that is, if
they ever start shipping them from Europe again -- there are none to be had in
the USA!) I used to do CW contests from home and SSB contests at multis, but the
long drives to operate at multis was getting old (like me.) I'm hoping to get
back into multis as a remote op, and I'd like to try remote SO2R CW from time to
time, especially if I can do a remote DX operation.
Thanks to Jim and Marty for helping me get started with remote operating, and
thanks to Jim for letting me use his station. I have to say that I'm impressed
with how far remote operating technology has come!
73, Dick WC1M
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