NAQP JUL 2006
CALL: WX4TM
NAME: TOM
QTH: AL
CLASS: SOABLP
OP TIME: 5.5 HRS
SUMMARY:
80M 80 33
40M 134 39
20M 132 39
15M 0 0
10M 0 0
TOTAL 346 111
SCORE: 38,406
SOAPBOX
Mercy sakes alive! Is the moon still full? The gremlins were sure with me in
this one. Talk about blowing it but good! A series of operator errors,
equipment failures, WL goof ups (mine) and pure bad luck led to the worse
contest start I've ever had. By the time I got it right, I gave up on
antenna switching problems with the Six Pak; re-cabled antennas to the DX
Engineering switch box and later thought it was going bad when I discovered
the plug had pulled out a bit apparently when I moved it to a more
convenient location; thought I had sound card problems; thought I had
Rigblaster problems; thought I had radio problems; thought I had mmtty.ini
problems; and finally uninstalled and reinstalled WL twice (because I didn't
do it right the first time). The biggest problem apparently was a corrupt
WL.INI file causing MMTTY to go nuts (intermittent no receive due to
overflow) which I feel sure I probably caused but don't know how. As it
turned out, I only got, then lost, 28 QSO's btwn contest start and 0030Z (6
1/2 hrs of pure unadulterated po'd frustration). After that, it was smooth
sailing for the next 5 1/2 hrs. I apologize to my SO1R team members and to
those whose QSO's I lost for not being 'up and ready' for this one. I hope I
can say I learned some simple but very valuable lessons in this one. Ah
well, I guess thats what happens when one gets over confident and doesn't
check, check, and re-check before contest start. 73 de Tom WX4TM
_______________________________________________
RTTY mailing list
RTTY@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/rtty
|