Glad to hear it wasn't just me having trouble on 10 meters in the contest this
weekend. Everything seemed different. The FT1000MP is at W6XA having been
repaired. The AL811H is being repaired. I had dug out the old SB220, but had
some problems last weekend getting it to work after a short trip out of town.
Think there must have been a bad piece of coax in the line, but took out all of
the extra stuff except the antenna switch and got it to work OK with the stand
by rig, a IC736. It really has a shot front end (since WRTC 96) and loud
signals overload it. Sometimes the load signal is just line noise. It goes
crazy with the broadcast signals on 40 SSB. At any rate, I put in what time I
could between family chores, visiting with parents, ushering at two church
services, attending Sunday School, taking the XYL to a movie (Chocolat, and I
recommend it as a very good movie in spite of no Academy Awards), etc. Also had
a TVI complaint that caused me to run barefoot on 15 meters for all Sunday
afternoon. The computer program summary said 28 1/2 hours, but that is often
wrong. At any rate, that is probably in the neighborhood.
K4BAI SOHPAB Triband Single Element, General Class still.
40 57
20 632
15 283
10 381
ALL 1353 x 616 = 1,891,736. This won't be the exact claimed score. The
NA program apparently didn't count quite all the mults since it had a tendency
to show some mults as "//////" in the mult place. I don't understand that.
Also, the points are probably a bit inflated since the program thought that
every mobile station was in England. I'll take the /M out and then add it back
in with a text editor just to try to get the claimed score right, although I
suspect the Cabrillo file checker program must ignore /M and will get the points
and mults right.
Thanks for the QSOs. I recall WB4SQ, N4NX, KM9P (who was the op?-- almost 3000
QSOs, I think), NF4A (plus N4PN/W4YWX) and there must be others too. It was
interesting to see that US guys are beginning to do a little running of simplex
QSOs on 40 meters to get US mults. I assume the same may be being done on 75,
but not in the General class band. This is a smart thing to do. Conditions
seemed pretty good everywhere but on 10 M. They started out mediocre and built
through the weekend, although I didn't get the great DX callers that Cort got.
KC4AAA did call me on 20 M, which was a thrill. Looking forward to CW, which is
more fun in my opinion. This SSB stuff with no DVK, using a push to talk switch
(AND a foot switch for the amp) gets to be hard work when the rate isn't very
high.
Hope everyone has a good week. 73, John, K4BAI.
Courtney Judd - K4WI wrote:
> Mother nature sure has a way of messing with contest plans.. I decided to go
> low power single band 10 meters thinking that I would be able to run Euro's
> and Ja's with no problems. The A-index took care of that with the absorption
> so bad Friday evening the only Ja's coming thru were on the crooked path due
> west and with out the Alpha they couldn't hear me. Saturday morning was not
> much better with nothing coming thru from Northern Europe. No DL, G,F or
> Scandinavia at all. In fact. only worked one OZ5 Sunday late for the entire
> contest... no SM or OH etc. Plenty of EA, I, S5 etc but all were weak and I
> had to S+P.. no runs. Sunday morning got somewhat better with a few G's and
> DL's but all were weak. I could here the east coast boys working them but
> they evidently were skirting the polar path. Sunday afternoon improved and
> had a nice opening to the far east. Actually made a small run with the few
> that didn't have to go to work with VR2, YB, BA, BN, BV,DU, HL calling in.
> The best two call signs that called were NO7UP and BA4RF. Also was called by
> KC4AAC and VP8CML so it pays to leave one yagi pointed South! Ended up with
> 988 qso's, 547 Mult's in 29 hours for 1,269,587 points. Not too bad.. would
> have got me 2nd place last year low power 10 meters so we will have to see
> how it sorts out this year. It was a most frustrating contest to say the
> least but at least I didn't have to worry about severe weather this past
> weekend! Didn't hear much out of the Southeast guys at all. Thanks to
> everyone who I did get to work! 73's Cort
> Courtney Judd K4WI
> ex-K4JYO
> check out www.k4wi.net
>
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