K3LR managed to make it over for the contest from OKC despite Oklahoma
getting hammered by snow. The airport opened just in time to get him
out. K4BAI opted out to stay home with the family in anticipation of the
ice storm the WX guys were predicting. Tim and I got there a couple of
hours before the contest and got the tour of all the new RX antennas Tom
had built this year. Seems like Tom said we had 28 different RX antenna
choices this year. That may be off.
The freezing rain started Friday night. We had a pretty good first night
despite the 4-square vertical wires drooping on the ground for the first
10' by morning. The station was much improved over last year with the
addition of a C-line for the run station, voting system, and other
do-dads. We had something like 900 QSO's and 92 multipliers Saturday
morning... maybe 257K.
By Saturday afternoon all of the transmit antennas that were made of wire
(including the 4-square) had fallen. Most of the RX antennas were also
QRT. At 4:30pm Saturday the power went out and we decided to call it
quits.
To add insult to injury, I managed to stick my Dodge 4X4 2500 in a ditch
100 yards out of Tom's driveway. No I wasn't in 4-wheel drive at the
time, but still embarrasing.
Tom had done a tremendous amount of work on the station to get us ready
this year. I was most upset that his work was for not. But we have all
signed up for next year, and hopefully the boys at W2GD will get another
chance at the USCG QTH.
Many thanks to Tom and his FB XYL Marsha for putting up with us. Their
hospitality was great. Thanks to K3LR for going to so much trouble to get
over here, and thanks to his K3LR's XYL for putting up with her
ham-a-holic.
73
Bill Fisher
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/3830faq.html
Submissions: 3830@contesting.com
Administrative requests: 3830-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-3830@contesting.com
|