ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, SSB
Call: W6YX
Operator(s): KB0VVT NF1R N7MH
Station: W6YX
Class: School Club HP
QTH: Stanford
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 101
40: 241
20: 466
15: 307
10: 277
------------
Total: 1392 Sections = 83 Total Score = 231,072
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
The W6YX station hosted 4 separate HP operations for Phone SS - W6YX (School
Club), K6SU (Multi-single), and N6DB and K6SF (both Unlimited HP). Most of the
station was still set up from the CW weekend with the major exception of N6DB's
equipment.
Rebar arrived early on Saturday and managed to get his station set up and ready
for the 2100Z start. A quick phone consultation with K6UFO (NN7SS) helped me
get the W6YX station set up for voice keying, on-the-fly recording, and SO2R
with a barefoot FT1000MP Mark V as the second radio.
Clayton/NF1R and I recorded our messages and were set up, ready to go on 10
meters, about 15 minutes before the starting gun. With Rebar's help I got my
K3 set up for Chris/K6SF to use with voice keying but no recording capability.
When Chris arrived about 10 minutes before the start we had him record his
messages on the W6YX station and we copied them to his computer. This meant
that we had no time to warm up a frequency so Clayton found a clear spot on 10
and started CQing.
Chris was having problems so I helped him get out of Test mode on the K3 and
then swapped headsets since the microphone wasn't working on the one I'd given
him.
Clayton, meanwhile, was not getting answers to his CQs and was losing most
jumpballs when he tried calling stations. Clayton's frustration was deja vu
for me - I had started SS Phone a few years ago and had the same experience on
10 meters. Our main 10-meter feedline is shared with our 160 antenna and
requires manually flipping a switch at the base of the tower to choose the
right antenna. It had been in the 10-meter position for the CW weekend so we
assumed it was still there - WRONG! The 160 antenna shows a low SWR on 10
meters and signals are strong on it so you don't realize it's the wrong antenna
until it's actually used.
I suggested that Clayton move to 20 since his 15-meter antenna was being used
by one of the other operations. 20 was better but a lot more crowded and
harder to hear callers to maintain a decent rate. After resolving Chris's
issues I hiked up to the tower to flip the switch and we finally got on 10
meters with the right antenna a half hour into the contest.
Most of the time we had 2 stations on the two best bands. There were times
when we had 3 stations on a single band, on 40, 20 and 10. The third station
used either a Pro67 or C31XR. There may have been a brief time when we had 3
running stations on 20 plus the second radio from W6YX. Interference was
minimal, most noticeable when one of the other operators was pouncing on a spot
near another's run frequency.
Nick/KZ2V operated as K6SU on Saturday and Jake/K6MP took over on that radio on
Sunday.
My apologies to Clayton, who operated the first few hours as W6YX, for not
thinking to check the 160/10 antenna switch. We didn't really recover from the
poor start on 10 meters and found ourselves several hundred Q's behind the
front-runners after only a few hours.
I operated the evening and morning shifts as W6YX until I was relieved by
Rebecca/KB0VVT in the early afternoon. Rebecca had some decent rates on 10 and
15 but things slowed down when she went to 20. I coaxed Rebecca into trying
SO2R - I'd tune to spots or find stations on the second radio and Rebecca would
call them between CQs on the run radio. This improved the rate in the last
couple of hours as we transitioned from 20/40 to 40/80.
If we try such an ambitious effort again we will have to get more of it set up
before Saturday. Unfortunately I had a work emergency come up on Friday
evening and had another conflict on Thursday so I couldn't be at the station to
set up early.
Thanks to all of our operators for their efforts and for living with the
band-change constraints resulting from having so many simultaneous operations
at the same location. Three of our efforts got clean sweeps and the 4th was
missing 2 mults - VI and NT. We made over 4000 QSOs between the 4 operations.
73,
-Mike, N7MH
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