NAQP Phone -August 2000
Call: W4MR
Op: AA4NC
Stn: AA4NC
783 x 187 = 146,421
Lightning DOES strike twice...
This contest was not meant to be for me it seems. A band scheduling change
left me with the day free, so I decided at the last minute to operate. I had
never done a single op NAQP before, so had to load up software that I don't
use much (NA) and hook up the station from its summertime "protection" mode.
After being hit by lightning earlier this summer (lost a 40m beam, TIC rotor,
TNC) I have been very careful to leave everything unplugged/grounded. I was
not careful enough however, as 2 hours before this contest, I found that one
of my FT990s was dead because it had a ewe receive antenna plugged in, and it
had evidently taken a hit. My 10m beam was lifeless as well. I suspect a coax
problem there. I swung my tribander at 30' around to the west to use on 10.
My 2el. 40 at 70' was used fixed west also, since the rotator is broken.
10 meters was a tunnel to W6. Practically nothing else worked. 15 was fair,
20 was pretty good. The low bands sucked as nothing has ever sucked before!
The QRN was so fierce that I kept looking out to make sure that a
thunderstorm wasn't right above the house.
I made lots of operating blunders. Since I didn't read the rules, I assumed
that non-NA stations didn't count for QSO points. NA version 10.28 backed
this up, as it wouldn't allow me to log a non-NA QTH or leave the field
blank. Is this a recent rule change or software bug?
The pace of the SO contest is a lot of fun. Much better than multi-two, but
I've got to work on moving mults more.
The winter version of this has got to be a lot better...
73,
Will
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