ARRL DX Contest, SSB
Call: K3ZJ
Operator(s): K3ZJ
Station: K3ZJ
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: USA-WV
Operating Time (hrs): 33:27
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 3 3
80: 72 42
40: 123 59
20: 622 84
15: 201 69
10: 53 15
-------------------
Total: 1074 272 Total Score = 875,568
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
I awoke at my Virginia QTH Friday morning with no heat or electricity. No
estimate for restoration. Schools and government all closed due to the storm,
so no work. So I packed the food from the freezer that would be ruined if
thawed and headed to my WV QTH, where I have a freezer and power that rarely
fails.
I arrived late due to high winds and downed trees along the way, only to find
that my 160/80/40 trap dipole had succumbed in the high winds (est. > 75 mph
on the mountaintop). I had just raised it to 80 feet the weekend before.
What to do? It was freezing (30 F / -2 C) and much too windy to climb the tower
to reconstruct the dipole. Eventually, I remembered that my trusty 80-10 OCF
dipole with coax was stored in my shed ready for a trip to Denmark later this
year. And I still have a pulley with rope below my C31XR from when I tried a
low 80M dipole for sweepstakes 3 or 4 years ago. It is far from ideal to have
an antenna resonant on 10 & 20 located just 8 feet below a beam for the same
bands. And even less ideal to have an antenna for 40 & 80 meters only 40
feet off the ground. But it is better than nothing.
Unless I wanted to go single band on 20 or 15, I had to take action. I didn't
expect to have a signal strong enough to punch a hole in the QRM on 20, and
maybe 15 wouldn't open ... so action it was.
After 20M faded out at about 9 pm (local), I ventured into the now-25-degree
night and high winds. The shed door broke when the wind caught it while I was
searching for the OCF with my flashlight. Finally, I found the antenna and
coax, and used some AB-105 tower legs to temporarily prop the door in place.
I managed to erect the OCF using the pulley and tied the ends to tree branches
that were within my reach. The almost-full moon provided sufficient
illumination without my flashlight!
I was startled, however, when suddenly I noticed a long row of 25-30 red lights
in the distance spaced along the mountaintop to the West on the other side of
the Potomac River. They seemed to blink in a pattern. My first thought was that
they are sending a message in Morse code. But to whom? After trying to decode
the signals, I decided that it might be a code, but it sure wasn't Morse.
Then I thought that maybe the lights were on landing alien spaceships. I am,
after all, in the middle of "nowhere" on a rural mountaintop in West
Virginia. We have bootleggers and drug runners out here, but they don’t use
blinking red lights to broadcast their presence. What is going on?
Now very awake and alert, but also quite frozen, I rushed inside. After putting
more wood in the stove, I worked some 80 and 40 DX while keeping watch for an
alien to appear at my door. Would "it" knock, or just come in?
Next day I called a friend to help repair the shed door. He explained that over
the past year windmills have been constructed to generate electricity along the
mountain to the west. And yes, they blink red in some sort of a pattern.
So, no aliens. Shed door fixed. And I succeeded in completing some 40 & 80
meter DX QSOs with the OCF just 40 feet high. Not ideal, but it worked
"enough" to gain some multipliers. I even made three 160 meter QSOs
using the OCF barefoot through the rig's antenna tuner. Not ideal, but 3
multipliers are 3 multipliers.
Best moments were working old friend Tony, I0IJ, in Rome. He has returned to
radio after many years of silence. And Martti, OH2BH, whom I visited in Finland
last year. He called from Kosovo, a new multiplier.
Thanks for the QSOs. I hope to see everyone again in the WPX at the end of the
month. It will be warmer by then, and maybe I'll have a better antenna for the
low bands.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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