7th Call Area QSO Party
Call: AE7IK
Operator(s): AE7IK KF7WPK
Station: AE7IK
Class: Cnty Exped M/S LP
QTH: Lake/Klamath border
Operating Time (hrs): 18
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs Dig Qs
----------------------------
160:
80: 35
40: 200
20: 5 90
15: 44
10: 21
6:
2:
----------------------------
Total: 5 385 0 Mults = 60 Total Score = 46,500
Club: Central Oregon DX
Comments:
This was an unabashed success compared to last year when Murphy went for the
jugular. This year I had a friend help out, and learn a bit and get more
operating experience. Kudos to Brian for the delicous burgers too. There was
no starving.
For the Lake-Klamath border, I spent a fair amount of time researching places
that were reasonably easily accessible, had trees available, and weren't in a
valley. This location has all 3 and was my second year in this particular
location. It's just slightly below a ridge to the west, so the wind is very
audible, but it mostly all goes up and over the trees keeping things relatively
sheltered. There are plenty of 100'+ ponderosa's in the area, testing the
limits of my slingshot. In the end, our antenna setup was amazingly simple. A
simple 40m dipole with a 20m fan element served for 40/20/15, and we had it up
at 55'. The 50' coax feedline would bob nicely right at eye level.
With the suggestion of K4XU/N7XU, a switch box was cobbled together to switch
the shield to center at the "feed point" at eye level, and then some
roughly measured radials added to give us reasonably decent 80m capability.
For 10m, a carbon fiber fishing pole moxon did quite nicely mounted on a DK9SQ
carbon fiber mast at about 30'. So in the end we had 5 bands in two antennas.
Rig is still an 'old' TS-440 running barefoot, nicely on loan, and at first we
thought we were going to have horrendous noise issues on 40m and 80m from the
generator - a Honda EU1000i. However, we used some tent stakes and copper wire
to make an impromptu ground system that got rid of most of the noise, along with
the 440's noise blanker.
N1MM performed nicely as usual. It also helps having ferrites on all the
cables which has been the #1 source for problems with this particular computer.
A new processor also allows for the running of fldigi, which as neither one of
us knew CW, allowed for a little dabbling in CW. It's not really efficient
though, and unreliable for running a frequency, and not really appropraite for
a contest when people want to ensure you got their call right.
Band conditions were interesting, some very echo-ey multipath on 40m later on,
but there were some interesting DX on. In the end, at least 7 DX entities
checked in (10 including Canada/AK/HI), and I'm quite happy with this years
results, especially after things died last year. Next year, my wish list
includes a simpler tent setup, getting off my duff and learning CW, and an
amplifier since there's no power category for county line expeditions.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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