Invited myself to AA6TT's Colorado station for another educational
weekend. I've never operated 80 m seriously from stateside
during a DX contest, and this seemed like a good opportunity
to start learning a new band.
Station: 4-square array, elevated quarter-waves of Rohn 45.
FT1000, Alpha 87A.
Final numbers: 320 Qs x 61 countries = 58 k
First night was fairly fun. Reasonably good European signals
from the start (more than an hour before our sunset) until
just after their sunrise. Couldn't get any of them to answer
my CQs, but didn't have too much trouble getting through to the
big contest stations. I could hear almost NONE of the Europeans that
answered the CQs from the big east coast stations. The
JAs started showing up an hour before their sunset and stayed
steady until an hour after our sunrise. Rates never high,
but ran over 200 of 'em the first night. Signals weren't
great, though . . . I bet 50% of the guys I worked wouldn't
have moved the S-meter even if I'd had the AGC turned on (and I
couldn't have worked 'em with AGC - another tip from the reflector!).
No second radio, but worked the FT1000's second rcvr pretty hard
during the JA runs -- worked 20 or 30 extra guys and a few mults.
Second night was slow. Condx didn't seem too bad, but I
worked only 68 guys in 14 hours. I drove 2x220 miles for this?!
Not a bad weekend, however. Learned a lot, and beat W0ZV's
tenth-call-area 80 m record by about 20%. The 4-square seems to
work very well.
Next weekend . . . another learning experience. Going to do the
160 phone contest for the first time.
-Bruce AA5B
>From Jack Fleming <oolon@eskimo.com> Mon Feb 20 18:22:27 1995
From: Jack Fleming <oolon@eskimo.com> (Jack Fleming)
Subject: Pacific Northwest Scores
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950220101541.27584D-100000@eskimo.com>
Here are some scores from the Pacific Northwest (that I picked up on 3835
right after the contest):
NK7U (M/S) 1,744 x 236 = 1,233,336
K7FR (QRP) 606 x 147 = 267,246
WA0RJY (20m Low Power) 546 x 79 = 129,402
N7IRR (20m Low Power) 443 x 73 = 97,017
The Western Washington DX Club again sponsored a 20 meter single band low
power tournament. The winner looks to be N7RO who had a 150 Q and 15
mult lead on me Saturday night! We award a special plaque and a dinner
to the winner (along with a dinner to the most improved score from last
year). We had 14 entries in this year's contest.
Highlight of the contest for me was having A71CW answer my CQ on Sunday
morning for an all time new one... No complaints about the conditions -
in fact it was tough for a 100 watt west coast station to find a niche to
call CQ on Sunday morning!
***************************************************************
Jack Fleming, WA0RJY oolon@eskimo.com
Seattle, WA http://www.eskimo.com/~oolon/ DON'T PANIC!
***************************************************************
|