W7CW, multi-op W7CW W7GS WU7Y N7VWV
599 WY
Final stats,
925 Qso's, 17 countries, 55 sections score 160,128
Omni6+, 1500wts homebrew, 140ft vert, phased dipole arrays for recieve(2
half wave dipoles, 8ft above ground, half wave apart, 180 degrees out of
phase)
Friday nite was a late start. Just finished the amp, and it was a hodge
podge of jumpers and relays stuck to the table with double sided foam tape.
Upgrading in power has its draw backs. The tuner in the metal switch house
turned into the ultimate bug zapper. The fella's swore you could read by
the arc. Swapped in a 12kv cap with a 15kv padder and no more arc's. Now
I am distressed by calls on 2mtrs that the insulation is on fire. The wire
from the tuner to the gamma arm is arcing over to the building. Obviously
we have hit a high impedance point on the tower. Three ranch fixes later
and 3 fires later, we cut a 4" hole in the building and use a large ceramic
feedthrough that I kept around for a conversation piece. Now we have
corona off the insulater. We find that centering the insulator solves the
problem. We are now on the air 3 hours after sunset.
No Europe. We hear EA8, but he's awful busy, so we never did get through.
Packet shows that others are being blessed by the Euro multipliers, but we
are not so deserving. Europe is reporting that AA0RS is being heard (and
worked per his listing), but not us. A quick check of Solar Terrestial
Dispatch shows that the coronal hole is active down to near the Canadian
Montana border, which is in our Euro path. AA0RS is not that far south of
us (500 miles?) but obviously he's skirting the coronal demon.
We work the usual ducks, including JA, the KH's etc.
Saturday was a little better. One of the op's was told a GI0 was calling
us, but we couldn't hear him. Early morning sunday we worked a few VK's,
ZL, 9M6, and heard JT1 and BT, but they were busy with the W6 crews.
The score was down 20K from last year. Q's were up, mult's were down.
The crew here behaved rather well this weekend, as well as a bunch of
cowboys can. Anything can turn into a bar fight with these guys. We set
up on 1829.7 and were only accused of crowding the window once. We cq'd
for JA's there and worked a handful. JA said we were getting QRM'd after a
while. When we switched the reciever back to the xmit freq we had
squatters. Oh well, it's name of the game. Go to church and some one
rustles your herd.
73 Jay W7CW
1AB Ranch
Gillette, Wyoming
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