ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: W8FN
Operator(s): W8FN
Station: W8FN
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: NTX
Operating Time (hrs): 19
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 70
40: 302
20: 344
15: 6
10:
------------
Total: 722 Sections = 82 Total Score = 118,408
Club: DFW Contest Group
Comments:
As conditions continue to deteriorate, it becomes more and more obvious how
important decent antennas are. Regardless of conditions,the big guns with good
antenna systems continue to soldier on making lots of QSOs, while those of us
with limited antennas -- don't. Final SS QSO totals here have dropped by around
100 a year for the last 3 years. I'm sure looking forward to retirement and
relocation to somewhere I can put up a decent set of antennas.
This running of SS got off to a horrible start. I heard essentially no signals
on 15, so again started on 20. In years past it's been possible to jump right in
and get pretty good runs going. Not this time. The first two hours were both
sub-60 hours, the first time that's happened in many years. It quickly became
apparent that this wasn't going to be a good one. To make matters much worse,
there's a switching power supply somewhere in my local environment that happily
takes in RF energy and re-radiates it as strong harmonics with nice big spectral
lumps every 20 kHz or so. This situation essentially destroyed any chance of
successful SO2R operation by noise jamming the second radio when the primary
radio was transmitting.
20 was OK but not spectacular for the first three hours, but finally faded and
pushed me to 40. 40 was good but crowded, and the inverted vee didn't deliver a
big signal so rates were still low. After a couple of hours a QSY to 80 was in
order. The 80m vertical is a pretty poor performer and I had trouble being
heard. Soon after going to 80 at around 0330 it got very noisy and then a
full-fledged thunderstorm roared through, forcing a shutdown for about an hour
at 0345. After the storm had passed the QRN still made it almost impossible to
hear anything on either 80 or 40. With fewer than 300 QSOs in the log, I finally
decided to quit fooling around and just get a decent night's sleep.
Back on at about 1200Z, things started going better and I managed to get a few
decent runs through the day on 40 and later 20. Soon things settled into the
classic Sunday SS routine of just grinding 'em out. Early Sunday afternoon a
very few west coast stations showed up on 15, but the band was pretty much
worthless. I did a whole lot more S&P this time, but managed to pick up a
lot of sections. At one point I was running on 20 and began hearing a station
under me that sounded like DX. It turned out to be VY0ERC, calling CQ! I quickly
worked him and moved to another frequency. I ended up with every section except
VI, including the elusive NNY that I missed in 2016 and 2017.
All in all, this one was another whuppin, but at least I got enough sleep. I
doubt the extra 5 hours of operating time would have produced more than another
50 QSOs, so trading the BIC time for sleep was probably a good deal.
Thanks to all who gave me a QSO, especially those who managed to pull out my
puny signal on 80 meters. Hope to see y'all again next time.
73...
Randy, W8FN
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