ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW - 2021
Call: K7GK
Operator(s): K7GK
Station: W6JZH
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: EB
Operating Time (hrs): 23.6
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80: 139
40: 310
20: 425
15: 242
10:
------------
Total: 1116 Sections = 84 Total Score = 187,488
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
This operation almost didn't happen, as about a week before the contest John
e-mailed me and said that a part of the 40 meter beam came down in a storm and
it doesn't look good. Later he said that since the VSWR still looks OK and the
driven element and the director are intact, perhaps we should still try it. When
I came on Thursday to check out the station, everything worked pretty well,
except the interference between the radios got really bad. Not sure if it can be
attributed to the busted element, half of which is still on the tower, but for
whatever reason 40 was totally unusable when 80 was on and likewise with 20/40
interference. The decision was made to go with low power, but even then the
interference was not much better. It mostly hurt me Sunday evening, when I
couldn't do anything on 40 when the other radio was on 80, but I'm sure I lost
more Qs due to time mismanagement and other poor decisions. You'd think after
all these years I'd learn how to setup the alarm for this one.
First few hours we pretty good, but then when you go to 40, low power does
become more of a handicap and this contest was no exception. That said, 40 and
especially 80 were pretty good this year, at least in terms of RX. I usually
struggle on 80, with a fairly low Inverted Vee on a city lot, but not so much
this year. Regarding the mults, I felt fortunate to find VY1CO pretty early in
the contest and found VY2TT with the second radio a couple hours later. Going to
bed I didn't have KP4 and VO. The latter usually gives me trouble and this year
was another one of those. I looked for VO1 during the usual morning times, but
heard nothing and pretty much gave up on working NL. It was a total surprise and
joy when VO1MP called in with about 4 hours to go in the contest. I sincerely
hope I didn't screw up the exchange, given how giddy I was.
Last hour was spent scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel, which made
pretty much every Q precious. Thanks to all for the fun outing. Already looking
forward to next year.
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