K5YAA and I had a good day Sunday. The amp relay didn't hang up even
once. Jerry made a few changes to the memory keys in the logging
program that made them easier for me to use. Still had problems. Will
have to extensively edit the Cabrillo log file after I get it from Jerry
to make it acceptable to the sponsors and, after doing that, will try to
refigure the claimed score. Nothing we can do about the QSOs that it
said were duplicates and refused to log.
Thanks for all the QSOs. N4PN was phenominal about getting through on
ground wave from Macon, GA to north FL. Nice to work K4HAL. Also K1ZZI
caught us for two counties as we past a sign post on the interstate. We
were running a bit ahead of schedule Sunday afternoon. We added Clay
County in the Jax FL area. Made only one QSO in Nassau as we breezed
through a corner in the interstate. Someone needed UNIon County badly
and we backtracked about 15 miles to dead end there for about 30
minutes. Still got back into LEOn County, where my car had been left at
a motel and where Jerry was to spend the night.
Jerry's set up worked very well. K3 to AL811H and a screwdriver on a
trailer. Also on the trailer is a gasoline generator which powers the
AL811H on 110v. He has a spare rig and antennas just in case, but we
didn't need them. Logging is on a Dell laptop. Power output varied from
400 to 600W. Jerry had the memories set for each band so that we could
QSY to SSB by punching two buttons. We didn't retune the amp or the
screwdriver for SSB, so the power was lower than it could have been on
SSB, but we did work OE3K once on SSB and DL5ME twice.
Jerry uses only the keyboard for sending and is real good at going to
keyboard mode to send anything that isn't in the F keys. He did have
his trusty bug along, but just used the lock device to key the amp for
tuning. I had told him that I must have a paddle for sending when I
didn't have the call correct in the computer on time and he mounted a
Bengali paddle on his passenger door inside that worked great for that
purpose. I really love that paddle.
We missed our goal of 3,000 QSOs by a good margin. I seem to recall the
total was around 2700. Probably 100 of them on phone. K0HC, WA3HAE,
K0JPL were good to get us to QSY to SSB and we always called for others
when we were on that mode and I am sure we worked some of the SSB only
contesters.
Many of the guys who followed us around aren't subscribed to these
reflectors, but we surely do appreciate them all. I think we missed MS,
VT, and AK on both modes. We did work KH6LC a lot.
15M was quite good for DX and parts of the US, but the rate was never as
good as on 20 (and 40 at night). We started on 40 Sunday morning and
didn't get back to 40 until in LEO near then end when we were rewarded
with QSOs with KU8E, N4JF, and the NH twins, N1IX and K1QO.
We stayed pretty much on the same frequency on each band and mode
(except for some special phone QSY requests) which should have made us
easy to find. We did QSY up about 500 Hz once when some IOTA station
had callers on our usual frequency. All of our SSB QSOs were on 20
except for one QSY with KU8E on 40M.
Full report to 3830 after I get the log from Jerry and get it into shape
for the log checkers. Jerry has a two-day drive home to OK.
73, John, K4BAI.
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