ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, SSB
Call: NM6G
Operator(s): W6CZ
Station: NM6G
Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: Mariposa, CA
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 213
40: 247
20: 250
15: 288
10:
------------
Total: 998 Sections = 80 Total Score = 159,680
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
Is this November. It was pushing 80 here in the foothills near Yosemite. I need
to move the main operating position to the other end of the shack and away from
the A/C unit that kept coming on until nearly 10 PM local.
Station:
IC-7800 & 756proIII
2 PW-1's
Writelog & W5XD/K5DJ SO2R box
Hamation Network antenna Switch and relay driver with Shack-Lan control
software
Inverted V's on 75 - one @ 85' oriented E/W and another at 50 for N/S
2 ele Yagi @ 100'
2 40 inverted V's @ 30' E/W & N/S
Stacked C31XR tri-banders (really interlaced mono-banders) @ 89 & 55 on ring
rotors.
3 over 3 on 20
5 over 5 on 15
6 over 6 on 10
Soapbox:
My first real contest effort from NM6G that was put up in 04 just in time for
CQP that year (that was with 3 guest ops0. First ever serious SS effort other
then for sweep. Single tower antenna system was designed for 2 x SO2R with SS &
CQP in mind (2 ele 40M yagi @ 100' with low V's and High & Low 75/80 V's).
Stacked C31XR @ 89' & 55' on ring rotors with separate feed lines for each
band. LOT's of comments from east coast and mid west of "You are REALLY loud"
on all bands (guess it works).
It helped A lot that I spent made two trips and spent about 6 or 7 days with
the help of my friend David, WB6NER, getting the station into shape and
functioning as it should. Among a lot of other things, that included finally
wiring the switching to stack match boxes and being able to evaluate the stack
compared to the upper or lower antenna. That lead to the discovery that the 20M
antennas were out of phase - BIG difference!!! Now I know why my station
co-owner, Roger, KD6UO, has been complaining about performance (he uses the
station remote over the internet). It was like a 20+ DB attenuator. DOH!!! I
thought it was due to the QTH as the S/N ratio was good (our previous station
was on flat terrain 200' from salt water towards Europe & Africa).
Lots of fun - some good runs on 15 Saturday. Also to a lesser degree on 20 and
40. Need to get the hang of SO2R. I really only used 2 radios about 10% of the
time. Just about the time I would get the other radio up a small run would
start and I would have to switch the headphones back. Really noticed contacts
would come in clusters - maybe it was packet - but I would go for 3 or 4
minutes and then have a mini-pile-up and then nothing and then 3 or 4 more at
the same time again. When the rate dropped below 50 I would S&P the packet
spots until I worked most of them then go back to calling CQ. Seemed to work
out.
Quit at 08:30 with 78 sections (needed NL & PR) and about 650 Q's. Started in
at 14:30 on 15 with VO1 being my FIRST Q (spotted on Packet as I sat down at
the radio). KP4 called me about an hour later. Yippee - now I get a broom to
decorate the wall!!!
I had a goal of 1000 Q's and had that but there were two stations that said I
was a dupe but I guess I had fat fingered them as they were NIL (but they did
not want to work me again - oh well. Then a 3 min power failure at 23:45
followed by 0000 to 0200 really dragging and I was still some 50 Q's away from
1K. I was really discouraged and about to give up. Then things turned around
to bring me within 2 Q's of my goal.
Observations:
Phonetics really help - especially the correct ones. A couple of dupes in the
log were due to people not using them. Also - being loud has its disadvantage -
especially on 15. Some stations were right in the noise (which on 15 was S-0
even with Preamp 1 on). This is a really low noise QTH and the QRN was about
S-0 on all bands for the most part. But the problem is you can hear stations
just barely out of the noise that maybe are using inefficient antennas on 40
and 75 or running low power (there were a LOT of loud QRP stations though) that
I imagine could hear me very well so they though it was the same on my end and
they didn't use phonetics.
The packet spotting was terrific - though there were a lot of busted calls the
last couple of hours. Also - it does no good to spot people who are S&P'ing. I
would get spots with 3 or 4 calls on the same frequency and none of them were
there.
Can't wait for next year. Let's see - 1500 Q's ?
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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