Here are the numbers:
Band QSO Countries Antenna
160 20 15 Half-sloper to SE off 140' of Rohn 80
tower;
EWE on receive
80 143 56 3-el KLM Yagi 140' (only 2-el working)
40 231 73 3-el Telrex Yagi 94'
20 689 103 6-el Telrex Yagi 150'; 4-el W6PU quad
78'
15 617 93 8-el Telrex Yagi 155'; 4-el W6PU quad
78'
10 240 63 4-el W6PU quad 78'
Totals 1940 403 2,345,460 final score
Time used: 39 hours
I began the contest with a moderate cold. Lots of grapefruit juice
consumed during the weekend helped make it better as time went on. Also if
I felt tired I just took a nap regardless of the hour, even if it happened
to be 1400Z.
The dry, windy weather made for terrible line noise all weekend peaking at
15 degrees. Only around sundown on Saturday during a brief shower did it
ease off so I could do some decent S&P into Japan on 10. Had to operate
with beams at 60 degrees when running Europe to try to keep noise down.
Even with that noise read S9+ on 10 meters on the FT-1000-MP S-meter. And
yes, I have an SEM noise phase/blanker, but I can't get enough noise level
on the noise antenna to provide for good null. Power company knows which
pole is the guilty one, but they can't take the 69 kv feeder out of service
to work on it until the weather warms up so no one is using furnaces at
home/businesses. The solar storm Sunday morning didn't really bother the
station as I was getting plenty of fluttery loud UA9's calling on 20, but
the line noise made it hard to drag the weaker ones through. I spent more
time than usual in the wee hours working 40 meters because that's the one
band not bothered by line noise. All I can do is hope for less noisy
conditions in the WPX SSB.
73, Fred
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