North American QSO Party, RTTY - February
Call: WB4YDL
Operator(s): WB4YDL
Station: WB4YDL
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: UNION CITY, TN
Operating Time (hrs): 9.5
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
80: 171 45
40: 194 40
20: 105 33
15: 28 11
10: 9 5
-------------------
Total: 507 134 Total Score = 69,966
Club: Tennessee Contest Group
Team: Be
Comments: Mr. Murphy paid a visit to my shack on the day of this contest. I
started out slow and it got slower when my Elecraft K3 gave me an ERR 12V
message and dropped the PA to bypass. It was intermittent at first and then
it wouldn't go away. My other radio, the venerable FT-1000MP Mark V just
bopped along fine at 100 watts all contest. So I wasted plenty of time
trying to figure what's going on and what to do about it. I discovered that
this is a known problem with early serial number units and mine definitely
qualifies for that at #616. It turns out to be a tarnished tin-plated
connector which needs to be replaced by a gold-plated one.
So after fiddling around way too long, the decision was made to use the 10
watt radio as a S&P radio while running with the Mark V. Needless to say, I
was not loud with this setup but surprisingly effective. I didn't spend much
time on the upper bands and went to 80M early. 80M was in good shape and
S&P'ing on 40M at 10 watts yielded reasonable results.
The only thing I forgot is that this is a 12 hour contest. I stopped
operating 15 secs to time because everybody seemed to "go to bed" at about
the same time ! D'uh ! When in doubt read the rules ! J Overall, had lots of
fun and heard many TCG stations - some I could actually get to hear me !
73, Jamie
WB4YDL
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