Jim, N3BB and I used IARU as a shakedown cruise for his "new" station. Gone
is the garage location and in it's place is a fantastic new radio/guest
house. Jim has installed Top Ten Devices a/b switches, antenna relays and band
decoders to automate band changes and antenna selection, plus Dunestar
bandpass filters and this was our first test to see if everything
worked together. Unfortunately we had major problems with RF affecting
our ability to change antennas as well as use the computers to log and
send code. Some band/antenna/amp combinations worked while some
didn't. In addition, the radio that worked usually had the wrong rotor
controls in front of it. We eventually gave up moving rotors and either
walked across the room to turn'em or just gave directions to whoever was
closer. Also, while we had all of the antennas available, we didn't have the
ability to switch between the antennas in the stacks for 10, 15 and 20 as
the 12
volt switching lines had not yet been run to the shack.
Jim had done a good job of getting almost everything installed and
connected, but we still worked all Friday evening and EARLY Saturday
morning tying up some loose ends. We finally decided to get some
sleep about 5 hours before the contest started.
The contest was a success as far as locating, and actually fixing some of
the problems, but our effort really suffered because of it. It was a pretty
laid back effort as Jim even let ME operate cw! It was lotsa fun although
much of it was sent entirely by keyer as the computers didn't cooperate. (I
apologize to those who suffered through my exchange.)
Overall we probably got in about 21.5 hours of operating time.
Conditions were kinda strange. I was on 20m SSB for the first few hours on
Saturday and noticed that the band was extremely quiet. I had about 4
120+ hours but kept checking to make sure I had an antenna hooked up.
No qrm or qrn but a good number of stations calling.
Summary: 84% of our q's were North America. Just not a whole lot of DX
anywhere.
Band-by-Band
160: Tnx VE6JY for the sked on Sunday a.m.
80: Not much time spent here. Jim worked a JA on SSB at our Sunrise Sunday.
Kinda funny as Jim was filling out the 10 minutes from a band change by
calling CQ around 3800. He decided to tune the bands and came across a
station calling him blind on 3805. It turned out to be JA0JHA - a nice
freebie. (Jim sends apologies for not calling CQ in the JA window as we
needed the
zone 45 mult on 75/80 - so thanks for calling us in your window.)
40: Small JA run on Sunday a.m. ended due to an equipment problem.
20: Less than 125 EU and JA combined. Nice little EU opening over the pole
on Satuday evening. Very calm as far as contests go. I still could't
believe all the wide open space to CQ in. I was able to copy guys on
SSB I normally wouldn't hear for QRM. Nice stateside runs.
15: A few Europeans and just 1 JA (worked skew path). Can you say
STATESIDE. Not 5 pointers but they sure run good!
10: Not much. Definitely no EU or JA. Missed the first opening due to my
not wanting to leave a 160 hour on 20m (a 10 minute rule trade-off). We
caught a secondary opening albeit missing 2 mults in the loud W1AW/3 and ZD8Z.
Given the conditions lately I think this is a really good contest to operate
single op. No 10 minute rule allows you to move multipliers freely and the
ability to use a second radio would allow you to run on the one good band
and s&p on whatever other band was marginal. The 24 hour format minimizes
the fatigue factor and packet help, at least down here, was virtually
non-existent. The ultimate would be a single op, 2 radio mixed mode entry.
I'm sure a good op at a decent station could turn in a pretty big score in
that situation, probably beating most multiop's.
Multi-op:
Callsign: N3BB Op's: N3BB, AA5RB
BAND QSO QSO-PTS PTS/Q ZONES HQ STNS
160 9 17 1.89 4 1
80 42 110 2.62 8 1
40 405 1289 3.18 23 10
20 962 2842 2.95 31 11
15 459 1333 2.90 23 7
10 17 53 3.12 6 0
---------------------------------------------------------
Totals 1894 5644 2.98 95 30 (21.5 hours)
Score: 705,500 points (rough estimate, should increase
slightly)
As Jim said to me Monday morning, the further back this contest gets the
more fun
it was. It was a very frustrating affair, but it had its moments.
73 and see y'all in the the next contest.
Russ--
AA5RB
russ@inetport.com
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