ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: W4LT
Operator(s): W4LT
Station: W4LT
Class: SO Unlimited LP
QTH: WCF
Operating Time (hrs): 13.5
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160: 0
80: 45
40: 308
20: 195
15: 74
10: 10
------------
Total: 632 Sections = 80 Total Score = 101,120
Club: Florida Contest Group
Comments:
Rig: Elecraft K3/KRX3/KAT500 auto tuner pre programmed for all antennas
Antenna: #1- Cushcraft A3s at a staggering 40 feet. #2- Homebrew ladderline
fed 2 Half Waves in Phase for 40 (doubles as a short Dipole for 80), in V-Beam
to the north west configuration (with thanks to next door neighbor for his Oak
Tree) mostly at 38 feet or so and GAP MonoGAP 40 asymetric feed half wave
vertical dipole at 3 inches for 40/80 diversity receive
Total time on: 13 hours 28 minutes.
One of my better scores on CW! Used as much time as I could... Lots of stuff to
do around the house and with the family, such as go to the grocery store at
contest start on Saturday and take my wife out to dinner on Sunday afternoon.
Life is a compromise. If I want to do WW CW and SS SSB full time, I must
compromise for this contest.
The U category is much fun for a antenna challenged station such as mine! May
try it for SSB. Running Skimmer-fed spots on 80 and 40 is like shooting fish in
a barrel. First time using the cluster on SS which made 40 the money band and
provided me an amazing 45 Q's on 80, many of which were ESP signal level
contacts.
Also, using diversity receive on 80/40 was very successful! I can actually
hear stations that hear me! Plugged my 40m MonoGAP directly into the Ext
Antenna socket and the 40m 2 half waves in phase into antenna 1 thru the
KAT500, punched diversity and signals popped out of the noise! I could either
use the transmit antenna for receive (the dipole) or the vertical or, in
diversity, the combination of the two with excellent results, especially to
deep west coast stations (it was not all that great in the East, too close for
the vertical). on California, Oregon and Washington stations, turning off the
diversity made some stations uncopyable. Will be using this again in SSB.
Station again performed admirably, only one self inflicted computer glitch when
I accidentally switched keyboard control via the KVM to another computer for an
instant by fat fingering a key, which crashed my logging computer. Fixing this
required a reboot. The Logger will be independent of the KVM for SSB. Computers
are the Devil incarnate.
Rant one: Cut numbers in SS! C'mon guys! Its not gonna save you much time
and is so confusing to hear T's and N's and A's in the SS exchange! Because of
the parsing mechanism, N1MMLogger doesnt automatically make them into numbers,
so if you are like me and log what you hear, it jams N1MMLogger and you have to
manually fix them... Waste of time to send cut numbers in this exchange format!
Rant two: Bugs should be BANNED! Especially the banana boat swing guys!
Wouff Hong to all you bug users! Also the light weighting CW guys with dahs
that are almost dits. One guy sounded like he was sending all dits! A hand key
guy was sending all dahs!
Some very strong QRP stations, one even running!
Strange prop: Hearing and working GA AL and MS on 20 with really strong
signals most of the time. Lots of FCG folks on the air, many OJ's passed
around!
I have been doing this contest since 1976 and it is still fun. In all that
time, a CW sweep has eluded me. I got the closest I have ever gotten this time
with 80 - Missed NL and AK, which I never heard, and tried but failed to work a
very weak VY1AAA on 20 for over a half hour with no joy.
Next year...
See you all in SSB. Have not decided yet if I will stay in my usual Class A or
move to class U LP. The cluster sure makes it fun!
W4LT
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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