I'm back in Ohio after a week on vacation in Florida ( a great way to
recover from SS!), so here's the report on CW SS:
80 40 20 15 10 TOTAL MULT SCORE TIME
N8TR 60 154 70 24 18 326 69 44,988 4:51
AC8E 272 128 0 0 0 400 74 59,200
5:15
K8MR 27 247 41 40 47 402 75 60,300 5:43
K8AZ 0 285 97 54 55 491 75 73,650 6:49
Total 359 814 208 118 120 1619 79 238,138 22:38
All High Power, Unassisted
Club: Mad River Radio Club
Missed:
ALL: NT
N8TR: NNY DE LA ID IA NE MB AB PAC VI
AC8E: MS WY ND MB PAC
K8MR: VT DE NL AK
K8AZ: MB SK PAC AK
Things got off to a good start at N8TR. Of course here I'm on an even
competitive footing as everyone else is a new station on the band as well.
The
two radio operation went well, especially with Pete's ACOM instant tune amp.
AC8E's time also went well. As noted by others, 80 was great, and had more
activity (up to 3585 or so) than I've seen in many years.
At home things became more interesting. I had put up a 40 M dipole in the
tree behind my house, so I could do SO2R with the PRO-67A on the high bands.
Without filters I had some 40M noise creeping into the high bands, but it was
tolerable. However, the first time I went to 10 to work WP3R and a couple
of other guys, when I went back to 40 there were no signals. I couldn't
figure out why 10M would have taken out the TS-830S. But soon I suspected
that
there was something else afoot. There wasn't much else on 20 either, but 15
and 10 still had signals, so I worked a bunch of guys up there, including VE4,
ID, etc.
After about half an hour of post flare operation, I took a break to get some
food and look at the GEOS data to see what the sun had been up to. While
upstairs a heard a few loud bangs, and thought maybe the neighbor kids were
playing with fireworks (not normal for them). After a couple of bangs I
decided
maybe there sounds were't coming from outside, so I went downstairs and found
the basement filled with smoke, pouring from the Raytrack power supply. So
I quickly pulled the plug, and opened some doors and windows to air out the
house.
With the smoke cleared, the Raytrack was clearly dead, but for some reason
the Alpha would not key up either. I still don't know why, but when I checked
it out a day ago it was OK. But I had my planned time at K8MR completed, so
I headed off to W8AJ.
I knew in advance there were rotator problems and line noise at W8AJ. I had
been there Saturday morning to check things out, and determined that the
rotator turned but the indicator was shot. I also found the line noise was
coming from a transformer on a pole behind the next door neighbor's house. I
decided that for a few hours on Sunday afternoon it would be tolerable,
barely.
While there I fired up the rig and checked out the antennas, including
finding K0AD sending CQ SS at 11am local. Called him and chatted for a bit,
surprising him that he was being heard doing his pre contest testing.
When I got to Alan's on Sunday, I pushed the power switch on the IC-781 and
nothing happened. No grunts, groans, smoke, etc. Just dead. I checked and
found AC on the cord coming in, checked the fuse, etc. Nothing. I spent
some time on the phone with Alan (he was headed back from a weekend in
Chicago),
and decided there was nothing more I could do. So I called K8AZ to warn him
I was on the way.
I gave Tom the chance to send me, and the black clouds following me, away
before they could wreak any damage at his house, but he kindly took me in
anyway. And as always, his station rocked. Of course as the aurora
progressed
the bands did not rock, although I was able to sit on 7035 for the last 2+
hours, with the CW speed slower than usual for me, and pretty steadily keep
working people through the aurora at 60/hour. I stuck with it until about the
last 30 minutes, when I went QRT so I could get home and get a start on
packing
for the trip to FL the next day.
I finished about 8000 points, or 50 qsos, behind WP3R, my standard apples
vs. oranges goal. But I did have more total points than the apparent second
place score of N2IC. This still is clearly the way to have fun on Sunday (and
Saturday too!) in CW SS. And a fine way to pile up points for the club
competition.
73 - Jim K8MR
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