ARRL RTTY Roundup
Call: WA2MNO
Operator(s): WA2MNO
Station: WA2MNO
Class: M/S HP
QTH: mn
Operating Time (hrs): 16:33
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 207
40: 186
20: 221
15: 10
10: 4
------------
Total: 628 State/Prov = 52 Countries = 13 Total Score = 40,820
Club: Minnesota Wireless Association
Comments:
How many times, as contesters, just hours before the contest begins we thought
that everything was ready to go for the contest and then find out something
isn't working right or a new problem pops pops up. Well, for me, this contest
was no exception to that happening to me. It started out Friday afternoon when
I had to pull the video card to return it for repair/exchange. I put in an
older but acceptable replacement until the repaired/exchanged card comes back.
It seemed to work just fine until 9pm Friday evening when I launched WriteLog
and got the blue screen of death from Windows XP. Now I'm starting to
hyper-ventilate. Looking at the info on the blue screen and assuming it had
something to do with the replacement video card I just put in that afternoon I
assumed it was the display adapter driver. I downloaded the companies driver to
replace the Microsoft driver that was installed and tried WriteLog again. Once
again the blue screen of death shut down my system. Now, hyper-ventilating is
starting to change into anger. Thinking of what my options were I decided to
dual boot into Windows 98 and install the video companies driver under that OS.
That did the trick and I never got a BSOD from Windows 98 so I was happy again,
ready for the contest.
Ok, so now it's Saturday evening and I go to 80M (which I had tuned up and
tried earlier in the week). Low and behold problem number 2 shows up. This time
I can tune up both the vertical and dipole without the amp inline but when I
operate with the amp the plate current is too high and the tube is running too
hot. After going back and forth trying different things I finally was able to
de-tune the amp and tuner to where the SWR was 2:1 or under and the plate
current was in the recommended acceptable range with the amount of power the
amp can run using RTTY.
I lost operating time with these issues but at least I was able to get an ok
score. I swear Murphy lurks somewhere in or around my shack.
I think most everyone would agree 10M was unusable and 15M was about in the
same shape, for my station at least. But, 20 and 80 were great. 40M was ok
Saturday evening but seemed to close down for me earlier than I expected. Late
Sunday afternoon I went to 40M and it was great. My best long duration high run
rates were on 40M Sunday afternoon/early evening.
I really like this contest because the local guys can chit-chat on 2M while
operating which helps with the slow run rate times when it's easy to get
bored.
Anyhow, I hope no one else had problems like I did and enjoyed the contest.
73 - Bob
WA2MNO
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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