SCORE REPORT - N6MU - CQ WW WPX CW - 40 only, high power
Call Hours Score QSOs Points Prefixes
N6MU @ N6NB 31 1,031,490 702 2826 365
Breakdown by continents:
NA (0 pts) SA OC AF EU AS
261 (216) 14 33 8 25 361
* * *
This is getting to be a habit. Once again, John operated at
my cabin in the Tehachapi mountains--and nearly froze. The site
is an 8-acre promontory point at 7,000 feet elevation, a place
that is very exposed to the prevailing west-northwest winds.
Time after time this spring John has gone up there to
operate when the weather was warm and balmy in greater
Los Angeles, only to encounter high winds and bitter cold on
the mountain. Only a very dedicated contester would put up
with this just to get on in a good radio location!
Friday night John made the ultimate sacrifice: he turned
on an electric heater even though the generator (a small
portable model) was struggling just to run the rig. The
result was lower power, but less frostbite.
Conditions on 40 did not seem to be as good as they were
during the ARRL CW weekend in February. John says it was
frustrating to listen to East Coast stations running Europeans
for hours and hours before it got dark here.
Another frustration: the Cushcraft 40-2CD beam, Rev. 3.0,
developed an intermittent connection that caused signals to
abruptly gain (and lose) about 10 dB. of signal strength in
the high winds, especially when it was pointed east.
No antenna has survived for even six months at this
location, and our third attempt at a 40-meter beam seems to
have failed in less than six weeks.
The first 40-2CD 40-meter went up in summer '94 and blew
apart in an ice storm just before phone sweepstakes that year.
The second one, reinforced as per W6QHS' suggestions in "The
Physical Design of Yagi Antennas," went up last November and
disintegrated during an ice storm in March. The third try
(a repaired and further-reinforced version of the second
40-2CD) went up in April and failed sometime before the
CW WPX.
Considering everything, John is very happy about his
score: just over a million points on 40 only.
73,
Wayne, N6NB
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