Hello,
I know that a score has already been posted about W5NN, but not a
viewpoint from the 2nd. operator's chair. The first operator was Mike,
K5NZ, and the second operator was me, Jason, AB5LX.
First, I must thank Mike, K5NZ for letting me come, and Sid Leach,
K5XI for allowing guest operators inside the station.
I really had a ton of fun during the contest. It took about 2 hours
or so to get the antennas fixed, switched, connected, etc. from the last
contest. It was really cold outside, about 30 degrees or so. We ate some
BBQ and sat around listening around and working the pre-contest pileups.
Some people on the band where I was (15) said that the propagation wasn't
good where they were.
Mike started on 20, and I was on 15. I had my best ever CW hour.
The little 'pileups' caused some confusion because I'm not used to handling
a bunch of signals all on the same frequency. We did the same bands for the
second hour, but the rate was only about 70% of what it was the first hour.
After that, Mike stayed on 20, and I hunted around on 40, 15, 10,
and 80. After a while, about 2300z, I went to 40 and Mike went to 80m to
work. I worked 40 for about 2 1/2 hours before I decided that I pretty much
had worked everything. 40 went way long about 0200. I worked an F6, KL7,
and a UU4.
I went to 80 and ran (crawled) for a while while Mike was on 160. I
pretty much sacked out about 0400. The rate slowed down quite a bit. I
learned never to have too many filters on. I turned down one of the filters
while seeing what got the loudest receive signals, and I heard a very weak
W7TO calling me that was calling me before, and I just couldn't pull out. I
got real lucky to work ID at the end of the contest on 80.
Again, I really had a fantastic time and I would love to go back
there again. I didn't even know that they made antennas as big as the ones
that I saw there. They really made mine look like little models.
jegold@inu.net
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