CQWW WPX Contest, CW
Call: KN7NV
Operator(s): K7NV
Station: K7NV
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: NV
Operating Time (hrs): 35.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 21
40: 409
20: 974
15: 274
10: 7
------------
Total: 1685 Prefixes = 624 Total Score = 2,801,760
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
I actually thought I was ready for this one. I got on every night the week
before and checked out the station, everything seemed to be just fine.
Thursday afternoon, my wife calls me......."Do you know about your antenna?"
"What antenna?"
"The one over by the weed burning pile"
"What about it?"
"It looks funny, it's hanging by a piece of rope, doesn't look like it always
does. I think the wind broke it."
Hmmm....a storm front is moving across the Sierras and it's blowing 30-50 mph,
maybe I ought to go home and see what's up.
Sigh!
My little tribander for the second radio is dangling off its 25' mast by the
coax! The screws that hold the Ham M rotator cases together have fallen out, the
wind load broke the last fastener.
I rig up the gin pole and block & tackle, bring it down and untangle it from the
rope guys.
My backup rotator is up at K5RC's, that's a 2 hr round trip. It's supposed to be
windy & raining on Friday. Nawh.....not gonna have a rotator for this one.
I rig up a plain bearing connection for the antenna with stuff out of the
antenna boneyard and put a tag line on it, and the antenna goes back up before
dark. Still blowing 30+ mph....
I'll just run out there and move the antenna a few times a day and anchor the
tag line to a 5 gal bucket filled with rocks.
Now were all set!
I get on for the NCCC mini WPX test. Everything goes well. At the end, I try to
get on 3.853 to yak with the gang, and can't hear anything. Wazzup?
Something is wrong with the R1 amp. Think the T/R relay has bit the dust.
I stay up till 1:30 am trying to make one good amp out of the two I have.
The R2 station is still fine. I finally realize only one set of parts will make
an amp that makes more RF than the exciter. Guess that's the one
I'll run.
I sleep in a bit on Friday, don't plan to work, but spend half the day on the
telephone.
15 minutes into the contest, the T/R relay on R1 welds itself closed and I can't
hear anything on it. It transmits just fine.
So what now? A SO1R or single band effort? Nawh, that wouldn't be very much
fun.
I try the 160m receiving dipole hooked up to the R1 receive line with a 20 db
preamp. Wow! I can hear all sorts of stuff with it. That's a full size dipole 4
feet off the ground. Later I find it kinda sucks on 10m & 15m.
Ok, so it's a SO1.5R....R1 will be for all second radio qso's listening on the
160m dipole. R2 will always be the runner, so running band changes will be a
fire drill (just like a SO1R).
And away we go...........
Great opening Sat nite to EU, too bad it's so short.
I overslept on one of my breaks by 2 hours, losing some critical low band qso
points and end up having to slug it out all day Sunday.
It gets so bad I just take an extra break and go watch part of the Indy 500
race. Lots of QRN on the high bands during the middle of the day here this
time.
The last 2 hours were pretty good considering condx. JA actually opened up on
15m (it wasn't open Sat till real late) with tons of QSB, but some guys go in
the log.
The rope rotator works just fine (no screws to fall out,). I moved the R2
tribander 4 times, at ~10 minutes each. That's only 40 minutes of op time lost
rotating the antenna (plus loss of the run freq). Now I remember why we like our
rotators. The 4 foot high 160m dipole heard all the R2 qso's, I haven't a clue
what it didn't hear.
As always, a fun contest with a very challenging format (which 36 hours are you
going to operate) with good activity.
Thanks to everyone for another good time!
73, Kurt
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