North American QSO Party, CW
Call: K6VVA
Operator(s): K6VVA
Station: K6VVA
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: LOCUST PEAK
Operating Time (hrs): 7.8
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 8 3
80: 32 9
40: 19 10
20: 194 51
15: 150 39
10: 84 27
-------------------
Total: 487 139 Total Score = 67,693
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Team: MWA Team #2
Comments:
Rig: TS-480 (100w & 50w) to TH3 @ 25ft, Jr. & Carolina Windom Inv Vee @ 40ft
Some photos: http://www.k6vva.com/2008cwnaqpaugust/
My NAQP experience turned out to be like a blind date gone bad - really bad.
I still haven't worked out all the kinks with Phase 1 of the Locust Peak
solar/battery remote site, so decided I had better operate at least the first
part of the contest from there with a generator. Especially since there had
been a flaky solar cable connection problem discovered on the previous visit,
and I doubted the batteries had sufficient charge to operate the full event
remotely from home.
That was a good decision, because the connection had crapped out again and I
wasn't even sure if there was enough battery power to operate the last 3 or 4
hours from home. Murphy had been at work already, although in my original
estimates, I hadn't adequately planned for the 24/7 current draw of the 5Ghz
unit and a Confuzer. My bad ;-(
The EU1000i which just came back from servicing had a problem with the choke,
but it managed to work if we set the lever to a 'sweet spot', so it's going
back to the Gen Doc this week.
Since I was up until the wee hours Saturday morning, we headed out later than
planned (my 2 workers/safety companions) were going to cut firewood while I
operated). The original plan was to resolve a squirrely problem in the remote
Confuzer involving a USB/TTL-232 connection to eliminate an intermittent loss
of a COM port. There was now not enough time to do this, which turned out to
be thee recipe for NAQP disaster later.
I hauled a 2nd TS-480 & power supply along so I wouldn't have to mess with the
TS-480 remote setup there. I've operated portable with this setup before and
my Dell D600.
Murphy struck right away - I couldn't get rig control or the Confuzer to key
the rig. The air got polluted quickly with more inappropriate rhetoric. The
NAQP was off and running but not me. After 2 hard power-downs and reboots,
things worked. Thank you, Jesus. I started 5 minutes late (it had been
looking like never).
Things were going fairly well and nice to work folks on both 15m & 10m. But as
the WX got into the 90's it got pretty warm inside that little camper (my bad
again for cutting down so many shade trees on the other side to make room for
antennas). Fortunately the small portable fan I took along proved to be a
lifesaver. I also had a small ice chest right next to me, and I was constantly
dipping into it for more yogurt covered raisins, red vines, diet coke and
another Starbuck's Frappuccino. Gottta love the caffine & sugar. Then add
Nicorette Gum in the mix. I had a bottle of Gatorade on the table, but knocked
myself off the air when I moved it and accidentally pushed the power switch off
on the Samlex power supply (QLF).
My mid-afternoon, although we fixed the flaky solar panel cable connector, the
sun had shifted out of solar panel utility and the batteries had not charged up
very much. I negotiated with my workers to stay longer than planned, and of
course gave them a bonus when we got back. Not as good as hoped for, but I
headed off the hill with 428 Q's, 117 Mults (51 on 20m) and a tad over 50K so
far. I was looking forward to my remaining 3.5 hours and a lot of 40m Mults.
But when I got home, that's when things turned ugly.
I inhaled a small Caesar Salad and some Dove chocolates, and set up the home
remote control stuff (it had all been taken along to supposedly check out the
changes (networked) to the remote Confuzer that didn't get made). Horrors.
COM Port 5 wasn't showing up again (for the remote USB Serial/TTL connection),
so I did what had fixed the problem 2 days before - a command line shutdown -r
command to reboot the remote Confuzer. It wouldn't work, and an error message
said I had to use a force command. To me, that sounded something like maybe a
hard power down. Until I can find someone to hot-wire the on/off button on the
ASUS and hook up a remote Ethernet controlled widget to restart the Confuzer
from ground zero, a total shutdown is NOT an option. Going back up to Locust
Peak alone was not an option (it was getting dark), and would have cost me
operating time.
So I tried to reach the local Confuzer Network tech/consultant but it was after
hours. I called another ham pal who is pretty Confuzer smart, but his
suggestion was to call MicroSCHLOK. Meanwhile the clock was ticking away and I
was not back in the NAQP game.
I called MicroSCHLOK's Tech Support number, but the the message was basically
to call back during normal business hours. #&^! So I then Google'd variations
of WinXP 24/7 tech support and a myriad of text combinations. As I clicked on
various links, and made phone calls to alleged 24/7 help sources, the blind
date got even blinder.
Finally I ended up with one outfit and was so desparate, I was willing to pay
the $89 service fee. When I got connected with a tech, the drill turned out to
be they wanted access to my Confuzer to download some type of diagnostic tool.
#&^! I had told the money collector that the Confuzer involved was on a
private 5Ghz network link with NO connection to the Internet. The tech claimed
that was the only way they worked.
ARRRRRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ;-(
So I cranked up the volume on my vocal chords and short of threatening bodily
injury, must have said something that got him to change his tune. We ended up
spending an hour and a half trying this and that but nothing worked. So I
started asking things like 'what if I try this?' to which he responded 'well,
go ahead' (#&^!). It was approaching 10PM local time (when I QLF thought the
NAQP was over).
Miracle of Miracles...I don't remember what I did, but the COM 5 port came back
so I was in business for a few minutes (or so I thought). 10PM came and went
and guys were still making Q's. That's when I checked the 3x5 card I had taken
with me to Locust Peak and discovered there was still one hour left to operate.
By this time most folks were on 80m, so I hobbled along with another QLF issue.
I had switched audio cables at the remote site from digital out of the TS-480,
to using the speaker output through an impedance matching widget that I hadn't
really set the levels correctly on. But this would enable me to use the volume
control knob on the TS-480 Control Head at home instead of screwing around with
a Mouse and the WinDOZE sound mixer stuff. #&^! The audio was worse than
before, so I just started looking for loud signals to call. I had already
discovered that the small ASUS mini-Confuzer just didn't have enough horse
power to eliminate some of the IPSound delays, so this made things worse.
Then things got super ugly. The battery voltage was too low at the remote site
to handle 100w, and the rig kept crashing off. So I dropped the power to 50w
and kept at it. But I still had problems, and apologies to K4TD, W0ETT, K5OT,
K0TG, N7ZN & AJ6V for 'disappearing' in the middle of our Q's because the rig
crashed. I had also tried powering down to 20w but that wasn't getting me Q's.
My FRUSTRATION level was off-the-charts, but a moment of shear joy was when I
heard my long lost NCCC NS pal Kurt, K7NV, and we connected. That was cool.
I ground it out until the very end, but also must apologize to my fellow NCCC
Team Members for not being able to put in the full 10 hours as planned. The
loss of some serious 40m Q's & Mults really hurt.
There is much more work to be done with this remote stuff, so on one hand I
guess this was a good (but painful) way to identify 'opportunities' to OVER
PLAN for new backup and expansion needs. Thank God this was NOT the ARRL SS
!!!
73 & Tnx for the Q's & patience with some of the remote glitches ...
Rick, K6VVA * The Locust
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