ARRL DX Contest, CW
Call: VY2TT
Operator(s): K6LA
Station: VY2TT
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: PEI
Operating Time (hrs): 42
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 155 60
80: 372 71
40: 538 78
20: 1359 96
15: 302 74
10: 17 9
-------------------
Total: 2743 388 Total Score = 3,192,852
Club: Southern California Contest Club
Comments:
Murphy traveled with me on this trip. I had to overnight in Halifax, not because
of WX, but because after the first load of bags arrived at Toronto on my flight
from LA, it took 30 minutes for the load containing my bags to arrive. By the
time I cleared customs the door to my flight to Halifax had closed.
When I arrived at the PEI DX Lodge, I found no hot water. I knew that the
furnace had run out of heating oil, that some pipes had frozen and burst and
been fixed. It took 4 tries by the plumber the next day, but I did get hot
water back for a pre-contest shower.
Art, N3DXX, was in PEI for the 160m CW contest and had discovered the main SO2R
computer was generating S9+20 noise only on 160m. To replace it I bought a 2.8
Mhz, 40 Gb HD, used HP for $200 that had 2 COM ports on the motherboard. $15
added a 2 monitor card and the memory I had in the computer junk box got the
machine to 1 gb RAM. Amazing how little computing power costs these days.
But Murphy was with me on this trip. I confirmed Art's observations. Before I
could install the replacement computer, the noisy one turned off and wouldn't
turn back on. Ah haa, a bad power supply, must be the source of the noise. I
plugged in the replacement. It wouldn't boot to 2 monitors. I fiddled with it
and got it to reboot perfectly. I made some adjustments, rebooted and it
stopped booting. Fortunately, there is a great computer store 3 minutes away.
Believe it or not, in the middle of potato fields there is a great computer
store. The original computer had its power supply replaced within an hour. I
hooked it up, but the noise was still there.
An hour later the replacement computer was ready. The bill? $20. As I told the
tech, a bargain at twice the price. Anyway, the replacement computer wouldn't
read the radios no matter what I tried, so the original went back in line. (I
only realized after the contest that Writelog on the original computer was set
to ICOM PRO and on the replacement computer I had it set to ICOM PROII.) I
wound up moving the AC cable to an extension cord to another room and that
helped the QRN considerably.
Finally, I got around to checking out the station. Everything inside worked,
except the 40m rotator wouldn't indicate it was turning. Turned out, that
didn't matter because the 40m yagi must have a feedline problem because it
acted like it wasn't there. It was too cold and windy to even consider asking
my climber to look at it. The 40m SA antenna must have the same problem. So I
had to use a 40m inverted V and it just didn't cut the mustard. The middle 20m
yagi didn't rotate and was stuck North. The middle 15m yagi went the way of the
2 40m antennas. Oh, and the NE (Europe) and SE elements of the 80m 4 Square were
much more horizontal than vertical. The tips were raised on bamboo poles to keep
them off the ground.
So I went out and operated the first 28 hours straight and felt I was doing
well and was a little ahead of last year. 160m was terrific, 20m early AM was
amazing, 15m sounded like it was going to open but never really did.
Unfortunately, it seemed I had worked everyone who could hear me and the rate
went away. I took 3 hours off during which I slept about half. I came back on
and made about 8 QSOs in 2 hours. Even CQing on one band and frantically S&
Ping on another led to abject QSOlessness.
Finally 20m opened, later than on Saturday. 15m owed me and it sounded like it
was going to open and I moved there as soon as I could, but it wasn't much
better than 24 hours earlier. I was able to pick up some mults, but the total
was still way below last year.
The last 3 hours I took time off because the rate was down to single digits.
There were some highlights. A single JA on the dipole of 40m. Finding Liberia
calling CQ with no takers.
73, Ken, K6LA / VY2TT
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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