ARRL 160-Meter Contest - 2023
Call: W0AIH
Operator(s): K0TG
Station: W0AIH
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: WI
Operating Time (hrs): 22
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 900 Sections = 80 Countries = 13 Total Score = 171,306
Club: Minnesota Wireless Assn
Comments:
I got a much later start than I expected. Typically I get to the station and go
turn on the heat, then get my stuff into the house and visit with Mary while
things are warming up. Once back out there and hooking things up I had strange
keying issues. To make a long story short, my Winkeyer in the Flex CAT app had
disappeared. In my process of making a new one, I kept missing a drop down box.
So dept of Duhh until that was figured out.
Then I had issues with the Laptop losing it's network connection at times to the
radio. Luckily I brought my old one along, but I still had to go back and forth
a couple times between PCs to figure this out. Settling on the old one.
Once that was done, I had RF getting into things when running high power. I had
to key the PGXL amp with the RF sense mode instead of the network. This is the
same setup I have used for a couple years now. So I am not sure why all the
trouble this time around. Good old Murphy. So all of that delayed my start 1.5
to 2 hours.
I did not know what to expect going into this contest with all the solar storms
predicted that weekend. It turned out to be not as awful as I expected. It was
interesting listening to how the band changed as the night went on. Rates were
pretty low. One of my best years had 1300 Q's in the log. I was surprised to
get to 900 this year as bad as things were, although Saturday night condx were a
bit better than Friday night. Working to the west was not that great. It was
tough to get those CA mults. Saturday it was a pipeline to OR, WA. I don't
think there were many stations to work the 2nd night. Noise on the band was not
very bad, but higher than usual. S5 Friday and S7 Sunday.
I did not have much use of the elevated vertical this year. THe SWR would creep
up to high after a short time. I went out there on Saturday and looked at tit
and it did improve, but there are still issues there. Also my SE direction on
the vertical beam was not working on TX. No luck fixing that yet.
States and Provinces missed:
LAX, NB, PE, NL, TER
The DX worked list is pretty short:
8P, FS, TI, V2, V3, XE, ZF, FY, P4, PJ2, F, GM, JA
The most interesting thing about EU DX was how, just at the end of what would
normally be the EU opening at their SR, two F stations popped in and one GM.
That was it for EU DX. None were heard the 2nd night, which was somewhat of a
surprise being that conditions were a bit better that day.
I did manage to work JA the 2nd night. THey (JA3YBK)seemed to peak once and
were gone.
It was an interesting weekend on 160. Thanks to Mary for another W0AIH
operation at "The Farm".
73, John K0TG
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