California QSO Party
Call: K6EI
Operator(s): K6EI W9KKN KZ2V N6GD K0XI AE6JV AI6ZU AI6TK
Station: K6EI
Class: M/MCntyExp LP
QTH: SIER
Operating Time (hrs): 24.5
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
160: 12 9
80: 174 57
40: 299 108
20: 396 229
15: 215 24
10:
6:
2:
--------------------
Total: 1096 427 Mults = 57 Total Score = 236,094
Club: West Valley ARA
Comments:
(Only including those that made QSOs above for points accounting reasons), but
team WVARA includes: K6EI, W9KKN, KZ2V, N6GD, K0XI, AE6JV, AI6ZU, AI6TK, and
KF6EMB each of whom made a significant contribution to our expedition.
This was our 4th year in Sierra County. The previous 3 years we've located
ourselves at the Campbell Hot Springs resort/hotel/campground and would operate
in tents on battery power, since they wouldn't let us use extension cords from
their lodge, nor operate generators. While we're all for having butts in chair,
we didn't want our butts to literally be frozen to the chairs anymore. This year
we made the change of using an AirBnB cabin on the side of a hill. The cabin was
beautiful, had a nice view, comfortable beds, heat, power, toilets, etc. Also,
it rained outside Friday and Saturday night, so we were quite glad to not have
to be outside and deal with that.
Unfortunately, what we saw on Google Earth didn't exactly match what we saw down
here on Planet Earth. Some of the 'dirt road paths' we saw on Google were not
passable by our vehicles much less the tower trailers. We were faced with the
reality that we would not be able to locate our towers where we needed to.
Instead of the 700 feet or so apart we had planned for, we ended up down the
hill a fair bit and only 73 ft apart. Yep, this was pretty much the
pattern-wiping interstation interference disaster it sounds like it would be. We
ended up mostly resorting to the use of dipoles on SSB and in some cases were
able to transmit on the beam and listen on the dipole. Stubs helped out a bit,
high quality bandpass filters helped too, solid radio frontends courtesy of
Elecraft and Flex helped, but when conditions are like this, what else can you
do besides suck it up and try to knock out some Qs and enjoy a weekend retreat
with some good friends? For a good time see here:
https://twitter.com/AmyH70/status/1049054644377333766
The highlight of the weekend was getting our new contesters in the chair
Amy/AI6ZU and Jeri/AI6TK to make a few more QSOs. In a CQP near you, we hope to
see them activate a county or two with their RV.
Between the Sunspots and our location troubles, we're down about 500 Qs from
last year, which is about right all things considered. The only mult we missed
was Mississippi, but we did beat our score from 2016 and this is still a solid
result considering everything that didn't go to plan.
Summary of the propagation:
10m: We didn't bother.
15m: Well, we were pleasantly surprised to see 15 meters as open as it was with
quite bit of activity. Due to interstation interference, we mostly used CW on 15
and only had a small window on Sunday with which to work on SSB, and by then
there just wasn't enough activity left to do much with it.
20m: Worked, but not as well as it used to, thanks to the Sunspots. The
geomagnetic storm on Sunday pretty much put it out of its misery.
40m: Almost as much activity as 20 meters, but again, subject to interstation
interference, so we had to scale back on the SSB side.
80m: Lots of good activity in the early evening with even some east coast
contacts on CW, but as is typical, only a little bit of useful activity on SSB
160m: In a brief window we were able to work a few stations, and our little
dipole on the side of the hill did its job.
Thanks for the Q's everyone, especially the ones we both had to work for!
See you next year!
--Bill/W9KKN
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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