ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: WC1M
Operator(s): WC1M
Station: WC1M
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: NH
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 25
40: 389
20: 174
15: 5
10:
------------
Total: 593 Sections = 79 Total Score = 93,694
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
Not a serious effort, just checking out the station and practicing SO2R/CW for
CQ WW CW later this month.
Missed NL again. I heard VO1TA on 15m running a large pileup of western
stations, but he couldn't hear me. After that I looked everywhere for an NL,
but to no avail. Oddly, I had a tough time snagging NE, which has happened for
a couple of years now. Luckily, K0NE called in to save the day. Where are all
the Nebraska stations? This year some of the traditionally more difficult
western sections, NT, ND, UT, WY, etc., were easy, as were some of the rarer
eastern sections like DE, VT, ME and NLI. Seems like NLI is hard to find early
in the contest, but typically several show up late in the contest. Must be
those Long Island zoning laws...
The rate was quite good whenever I got on, and it looks like it wouldn't have
been too hard to do 1000 Qs with a few more hours of work.
For SO2R practice, I resisted switching the headphone audio from split to mono,
trying to copy the left and right radios simultaneously as much as possible. The
idea is to shift the mental focus instead of the actual audio. SS is
particularly good for this type of practice because of the long exchanges: it's
quite a challenge to copy the response from the run radio while continuing to
S&P on the other radio.
Good thing I used this contest to check out the station. No problems with
antennas, though I need to do some prophylactic work on the TIC rings before
the temperatures drop much further. They tended to freeze up during ARRL DX CW
last year. But there were a few indoor technical problems after reinstalling
the 87A and 2000A remote amps, which had been disconnected and moved so the
wall-to-wall carpet could be pulled up after a basement flood about a month
ago. Also had some work to do to get all the software up to date after the long
hiatus since IARU. The worst was some issues with the USB ports on my PC
exhibiting strange behavior, like the Bluetooth mouse hop scotching across the
screen, the soundcard used for LP-PAN/PowerSDR-IF no longer working, some
devices reporting they were running USB 1.1 instead of 2.0, and the YCCC SO2R
box randomly disconnecting.
All the problems, plus some scheduling issues, cause me to get a late start.
Didn't get on the air until three hours into the contest. The glitches
subsided, but the soundcard and SO2R box continued to disrupt operations every
now and then. No big deal for a non-serious effort. After the contest I
reinstalled the USB hub and soundcard drivers, and moved a PCI USB card to a
different slot in the PC. That seems to have solved the problems (I think.)
Could be time to retire my 3-year old PC, as it's now obsolete and no firmware
upgrades are available.
Also used this opportunity to test the client/server version of AntennaMaster,
my automated antenna switching and tuning software. The c/s version isn't
complete, but it worked well enough for operating my own station. Lots of work
before it's ready for prime time.
See you in CQ WW CW.
73, Dick WC1M
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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