ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: K4XD
Operator(s): K4XD
Station: K4XD
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 19
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 270
40: 228
20: 138
15: 28
10:
------------
Total: 664 Sections = 79 Total Score = 104,912
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Comments:
2010 marks my fourth year of hamming and as many years of SS. I like lots of
different kinds of contests for lots of different reasons, but nothing makes me
feel more like I'm part of a team than entering SS along with my fellow PVRC
club members. It's a friendly but very spirited competition and like any
athletic event where all the entrants are unpaid and competing for the love of
the sport and the thrill of winning, you just can't beat the excitement factor!
Hardly anyone who participates in SS is doing it to just go through the motions
-- there are too many other things competing for our attention to spend precious
hours on something you are less than passionate about.
The club reflector seems the most active before and after SS too -- helpful
advice, moral support, and good old fashioned cheerleading -- it all helps in
the buildup to The Big Event. SS is best when accompanied by a sunny but
chilly Fall day, that different looking Autumn light, the cool air reminding us
that winter is coming. It's ham radio's big football game -- we should tailgate
before SS! OK, that's FD...
I was pretty confident that my station was in good operating condition (writers
call this "foreshadowing"). After all, I had been using it for light contesting
and DX'ing pretty steadily, and the only known problems were both fixed -- a bad
K9AY relay box (surge took out some traces to ground on the PCB - James Wolf
provided outstanding support to troubleshoot and repair), a rope holding up the
80M doublet that found itself a permanent part of a tree with the antenna down
about 10 feet at the apex. Good to go.
So despite all that good advice on the reflector, it was 90 minutes before
showtime that I flipped on the switches including the second radio of the SO2R
duo, the small but feisty Yaesu FT-857D, a Tokyo HyPower amp so I could run the
150W allowed max in the A category. Lights shining and fans whirring, good.
Ready to roll. I shut down DXLab and fired up WriteLog, opened up a new SS
contest log, switched on the dummy load, and sent K4XD on radio 1, the Icom 756
Pro II. Dah-di-dah, di-di-di-di-dah, dah-di-di-dah, dah-di-dit. Boy would I
hear that enough times in the next 24 hours! The reassuring red TX light
blinked on the Icom. Check. Hit the down arrow to switch to the second radio
and repeat. Nothing. WT??? Both radios are driven off the same Winkeyer, so
I knew all the connections and settings up to the Winkeyer were good since the
Icom was TX'ing OK. Tug on the wires, reseat cables, try again. Nada. Aha --
the second radio slot is switchable between three different radios, and the
switches were set for the Flex SDR-1000. Throw the switch towards the FT-857D
setting, and voila! CW is flowing. OK, now back to the ICOM. K4XD. Silence.
Double WT??? Now the Icom wasn't sending! Go to the WriteLog ports setting,
everything looks good, click OK, now it works on both radios. But when I go
back to the Icom, nothing again. 60 minutes to showtime. This is starting to
look like a SO1R performance. Why does this stuff always happen?! I just
"know" I didn't change anything. Yeah, right.
Back to the WriteLog settings, and I notice there is a Winkeyer and a Winkeyer
II. I'm using the II setting. Don't I have a II?! I don't know. Try the
plain Winkeyer. Success!! OK, we're on for SO2R.
45 minutes to showtime.
Hit the LDG autotuner hooked up to the FT-857D. Nice little box, has only one
button and one LED. Autotuners for Dummies! Perfect! Sound of relays
grinding, grinding, grinding, marbles in a can, six seconds, seven, eight.
Stops. Three flashes of the LED. Not good. Few more checks -- aha, the
second radio coax is still on the SDR-1000! Great, I was tuning into an open
connection. I'm hoping an SO-239 can emulate a very tiny antenna as far as the
PA is concerned. Hook up the coax, and sigh of relief, the auto-tuner finds
happiness in under a second. One more run-through with WriteLog and all is
good.
15 minutes to showtime. Piece of cake. Note to self: Pay attention when the
guys on the reflector say "don't wait until Saturday to test your equipment!"
People who've read my previous writeups on SS know I can be a little (a lot?)
obsessive about getting the Sweep. To me it's the personal satisfaction
subplot that complements the main plot of helping to maximize the club score
and keeps things interesting when the rate gets a wee bit ... tiring. So for
some unfathomable reason, instead of entering in the U category as I always
have in the past, with full access to the cluster and a full gallon in the
tank, in search of a "different experience," I decided to see how things would
go with low power and no cluster, the "Type A" experience. After all, doesn't
everyone say, "don't chase the mults, they will come to you?"
I also decided to focus more on 40 and 80 this year, since going after 20 seems
to put me up against Much Bigger Guns. I have come to realize that even what
appears to be a clear 400 Hz might really be somewhat less, and strong stations
CQ'ing near my frequency but in my skip zone could be covering me up in my
target area. So I'm turning around 40 and the band sounds pretty good, so when
the contest starts, I start S&P'ing a bit above 7025. I figure everyone else is
doing the same thing so I jump 10 kHz up the band and hope I can stay a little
ahead of the crowd and get in on the first call. At this point in the contest,
I figure most people CQ'ing are going to be doing so for many hours, so I decide
to only wait for one exchange to complete and if I can't get through, move on.
This works well, and this is a fun part of the contest -- everyone is a new
station, and almost everyone is a new mult.
MDC, OH, KY, NH, ND - holy cow, ND on the 5th QSO! How cool is that?! EPA,
NNY -- another good one in the bag early -- IL, SNJ, MI, TN. After 15 minutes,
I decide it's time to start "dueling S&P" and get the FT-857D going on 20M. In
the past, I have found CW SO2R to be a bit of a challenge. Copying one 25 WPM
signal is pushing myself, but as soon as another one starts up in my other ear,
it's all over. I'm not sure what changed because I haven't really practiced
anything, but for some reason this time, I could simply not "listen" to what
was happening in either ear and let my brain focus on one signal. I think
having them be slightly different audio frequencies helped alot, as I noticed
those times when they zero beat and sometimes even sent the same letter at the
same time were unnerving.
So that's probably the biggest personal improvement of the contest - being able
to comfortably do split-audio SO2R CW, one radio in each ear.
MAR is often a Sunday morning 40M thing for me, but this time I logged VE1OP in
the first hour. The first hour ended with 60 Q's, nothing to write home about
but a lot better than things were seeming two hours before as Murphy was
dancing on my radio table.
In the next hour I did a little tuning around on 15M in the second radio hoping
to hear VY1, but no cigar and no Eric or J. An SK showed up in the next hour,
always nice to get in the log, and I continued with the two radio S&P approach
until 2330, when I decided it was time to go enjoy the spoils of 80M. Ah,
there's no place like home. For the couple of hours, it was mostly CQ'ing on
80M and S&P on 40, and the East Coast came a-calling, mostly 1x2 and 2x1's,
mostly fast CW, and the rate was OK. I hooked WriteLog up to getscores.org,
which had a pretty small turnout compared to the hundreds of stations on the
air. I wish more stations would send up their scores -- the real-time
leaderboard is fun and adds one more reinforcement that we are all together in
this wonderful competition.
I was the happy bachelor this weekend so I took 15 minutes to rummage through
the freezer and find something to heat up (honey, I thought you said there was
a pot pie in here? What's "Lean Cuisine?" Looks good in the picture, but I
think somebody put the wrong stuff in the box!).
40 had gone long and over the course of the evening yielded up SDG, UT, SD, and
the beginning of the NCCC flood including SF and SV.
In the 0200 hour I worked KL7RA easily on 40M, no pileup, right after hearing
him work VY1EI. I tried the usual trick of CQ'ing up a few hundred Hz hoping
to entice VY1EI into a QSO, but no joy. Oh well, it's still early (more
foreshadowing).
The mults were now pretty spread out, with a QC, ON, SB, WY, LAX and MS coming
in before midnight. I settled in at 3514 and CQ'd away. Later I would learn
my CW signal sounded like a goose with a sore throat, sort of the CW equivalent
of "RF in the mike." "RF in the key?!" Fortunately (?) I didn't find out until
much later or it would have distracted me -- apologies to those of you who
wondered why I was using a converted spark gap transmitter in SS. I guess
that's one way to stand out in the crowd...
The midnight hour struck with 352 Q's in the log. Not exactly a world record,
or even a personal one. OK, so now I was starting to feel the difference
between U and A, not just understand it intellectually. When runs dry up,
S&P'ing is a lot slower as you listen to every signal, ID it, add it to the
band map, and turn the dial. I can say I was probably getting better at
recognizing some of the more prevalent stations after ID'ing them 10 times,
although I'm not sure that "knowledge" will last even into CQ WW CW. I also
felt at times like I was playing leap frog -- I'd ID a station I'd worked, S&P
up 20 kHz, and then ID the same station again. Stop that!! Hold still!!
Speaking of ID, both ID and PR made it in the log too. That Sweep was starting
to seem promising...
As the clock struck 2:00AM, it was suddenly 1:00AM again. I don't know if that
made me feel better or worse. Was I not staying up as late as I thought, or was
I having to relive the last hour all over again? Did SS just turn into a 31
hour contest? (no!) If I go to bed now can I sleep for 4 hours instead of 3?
(yes, but you still only get 6 hours off to work the whole enchilada). It
doesn't take much to amuse the mind after 9 hours of listening to disparate CW
signals in each ear!
According to WriteLog I pulled the plug at 0709 with 440 Q's and decided "the
rate will probably be better Sunday afternoon." This is the same line of
thinking that leads people to believe exercise and dieting will be much easier
to do if you just wait until tomorrow! Sure made sense at the time when my
eyelids weighed ten pounds each.
I set the alarm clock for 6:30 (3:10 to 6:30 is a Texas 3 hour nap).
One dream later the dog wanted to go out at 4:30. WT??? part III. Stepping
out from under the covers, I mused about why 65 degrees in November feels 20
degrees colder than 65 degrees in August, threw the dog out with that "don't
bark or I keel you" stare, and tried to sleep standing up without falling over
for five minutes while he had a long, heartfelt sniff of every leaf and acorn
in the backyard.
Back to bed and I felt like my eyes barely closed when the alarm went off.
Wow, do I feel refreshed. Not. OK, 30 minutes more, I still have 2 and a half
hours of off time to burn, might as well burn some more now -- Sunday afternoon
will be great if I don't "wear out my welcome" on 40M now. Sure.
1100 UTC and I'm really up now, throw a Keurig k-cup in the machine (a great
invention, a fast, fresh cup of coffee every time. But compared to a pot of
coffee, it's pricey. Compared to forking over a couple dollars for a cup-o-Joe
to $tarbucks, it's a bargain), and settled back down in front of the radio. S&P
on 80 and 40, hmm, some of the "old favorites" still there, but about 50% new
guys. I'm really starting to miss the cluster spots at this point. Not sure
I'll be doing "A" mode again soon. And I'm wondering what cool stuff I'm
missing on the RBN too. "Blind S&P'ing" definitely slows down the rate,
although I'm equally sure I picked up some Q's that I'd otherwise have missed.
RI called in, and so did NE, which apparently gave a lot of folks fits. Other
than that, the morning was surprisingly mult-free.
Things were slowing down at 1530 and I decided it was time to give 20 a listen.
I still needed MB, AB, NT, and EWA for a sweep. MB came in first, before local
noon. I didn't recall having EWA being really tough so I was pretty confident
on that one, and sure enough it showed up in the 1800 hour. Even though my
avowed strategy was to "CQ and let the mults come to me," I was starting to
sweat a bit about NT and noticed my second radio was starting to gravitate
toward known NT hangouts on 20M and 15M. Hard to say if I really lost any Q's
over that "semi-conscious" search, but I know I was doing it.
At 2000 hours I had to go pickup my XYL who had driven back from FL after a
horrendous flight from NC to FL on Thursday, and when I came back at 2100, it
was a severe case of The Doldrums. I could just picture those sailors who
spent weeks in a wind-less sea, no land in sight, slowly metering out the water
supply wondering if it would outlast the calm. The QSO rate plunged from 30 to
20 to ... 9! I had crossed the 100K point threshold and felt like I was doing
a decent job for the club, but it was clear I was not going to break my 2009
score, and at 2200, the Fun Factor was getting severely eclipsed by the What Am
I Doing? factor, and I decided to stop before I developed a case of SS fatigue
that would make it hard to get up for SSB SS in two weeks.
I came back to the radio a couple more times and spent 10 or 15 minutes trying
to get a flame going, but that rate-o-meter was stuck in the single digits, and
at 0024 I decided to put it in the books at 104K points, 669 Q's, and 79
sections. Sigh, no Sweep for K4XD in the CW SS. I have to admit that it did
actually turn out pretty well given no cluster, but close is no SS Mug and I'll
be turning on the "evil spot machine" in two weeks so I can hopefully continue
to add to my mug collection.
All-in-all, nostalgia is already kicking in and I am looking back fondly on the
event and looking forward to another go in two weeks! CUL and GL!
73,
Rowland K4XD
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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