CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY
Call: W4PK
Operator(s): W4PK
Station: W4PK
Class: SOAB(A) HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 14.0
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs State/Prov DX Zones
------------------------------------
80: 91 28 18 7
40: 112 26 41 17
20: 158 25 66 23
15: 344 23 80 23
10: 132 14 52 19
------------------------------------
Total: 837 116 257 90 Total Score = 956,558
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
Murphy paid me a visit big time this year, several times.
I had just renovated my "office" with a new floor, painted my walls,
and most importantly I had constructed new furniture for my equipment. This of
course involved removing all my cables and reconnecting them behind the new
furniture, and this took a lot more time than I had thought it would. I did
not get this completed until after a couple of hours after the contest had
started.
The first instance was that I suddenly had no FSK and PTT on my primary radio.
They were fine for my secondary radio. To make a long story short; after much
trouble-shooting I finally determined that I had 3 out of 8 ports on my Edgeport
USB-to-RS232 converter that would not even pass a loop-back test with an analog
loopback plug. I finally found ports that would work, two for the FSK/PTT
functions for my radios and the other three for controlling my rotators. I
have no spare ports anymore.
The second instance was about noon on Saturday my PW-1 suddenly started pinning
my SWR meter and I had no power output. I have the PW-1 in the basement
underneath my office and I started smelling really strong "hot' orders of
the electrical type. I was using the PW-1 on 10M with its tuner enabled since
my SWR was about 1.7:1 on this band. I was running it with about 900W showing
on the meter, and I was sure that I had fried something in the PW-1. But
luckily it turned out to be my Elecraft directional coupler instead. This
coupler is rated for 2 KW up to 54 MHz but obviously it did not like a 1.7:1
VSWR load. The internal board and its components are charred beyond
recognition.
The third instance is that that I had two of these ICE model 303 lightning
surge protectors fail on Saturday afternoon, with both having a definite burnt
smell. This was on 15 Meters at the time and they were both in line (one at
the house and the other at my tower base) with my 3-element SteppIR. These
suppressors supposingly are rated at 8 KW PEP up to 200 MHz, but I have had
others fail in the past. I have bypassed them for now but I will need to
replace them with something different (probably Polyphasor) before the next
lightning season.
The upshot of all this is that I was only able to operate for 14 hours this
year.
I did a lot more S&Ping this year than I normally do, but I did have some
good runs with both radios. Once I was running on both 10 and 15 Meters when
an operator at NR4M (was it you, Steve?) was trying to communicate with me!
The problem I had was that I had three guys calling me at the same time on 15M
and I became totally confused! Sorry!
One final comment is that the skimmer spots worked better than ever this year.
I had my spot timeout set for 5 minutes but even at that I was overwhelmed by
the sheer number. But I did find some nice multipliers!
Until next year!
73, Sam W4PK
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