1st CQ160 - K8DO - long

[K8DO at aol.com]

K8DO   -  2 ops / 1 rig / 1kw / No Packet / whatever class that makes it...
....  25 hours actual

Raw score:    872  X  57 X 20  =  157,850    

ops: K8DO  Denny / KB8NNU  Dave  /  Murphy 



Soap:
First time effort for me, so I have no comparison.... It was fun, though I
was hallucinating by Sun AM....  slept thurs nite - worked fri - test fri
nite - worked sat - test sat nite - collapsed sun 7am...

Decision to contest seriously was 2 weeks ago...  so I finished one vertical
with elevated radials... then decided to get a second one up and phase them
(poles had been set through frozen ground a couple of weeks earlier)... Got
the second one up and did get the relay boxes mounted, but never got the
relays wired to the antenna terminals...  Zero temps and 30 knots of wind
were average for the two weeks, and on the non-average days it got nasty...
.So we ran a single transmit antenna for the test... Also, I spent noons and
nights, putting up 3 beverages { N/S/E }... I was a half hour late starting
the test, because I decided to terminate the bevs, and to get a few short
radials on the east wire... the bevs were worth their weight in gold,
though... we liked them so well that I spent the time I was not operating
Friday nite building a control head / relay box, to make them relay
selectable ... I never had a beverage before, or I would have known they
should come ahead of the transmit antenna(s)... anyway, they were such  a
smash hit with Dave that he absolutely demanded a #4 to the west... (I guess
3 in a row is never enough with a nice girl like bev)... so, there I was at
2:30 pitch-black-in-the-am-out-of-my-friggin-mind, in the weeds, being blown
out of my clothes, hands completely numb, running the west bev (unterminated
- I do have limits:)    It turned out to be a good decision as that west wire
got several multipliers for us, KH6, etc...
About 3 hours into fri nite, Murphy woke up, stretched, yawned, and blessed
the 30 amp dc supply that powers the Omni VI... No, it didn't die, it didn't
go over/under voltage, it didn't do anything, except oscillate and modulate
really nasty crud onto the xmit signal..  from our end, there was not a
problem in the world... we were making power and holding our run frequency...
'cept, we started getting nasty comments about our signal... the TR7 is
loaned out to a local novice\tech to help him upgrade and we couldn't hear
ourselves, so we shut down and I ran to the office to get the 706 and lug it
back to the barn... sho nuff sounded bad... then I spent almost 2 hours
stumbling around with vapor lock of the brain, blaming everything in this
world, except that innocent looking PS, which was checked (first thing) and
 holding within 0.2 delta-vee... I finally wired up the IC-706 (a more
unlikely contest rig you never saw) and started to go with that...  we heard
the same crud on it (rx with the Omni)... THEN... and only then, the light of
reason penetrated the basalt encasing my frontal lobes - or was that the
nasty gleam from Murphy's eye?... a deep cycle battery and a charger were
assembled, and the Omni VI re-inserted into its hole in the bench, and we
were running again (and clean - my apologies to those who heard the
racket)...

Anyway, that's the best I could do... it was fun (I'll know for sure after I
get a nights sleep)... and I'll be back next year, older and, hopefully,
wiser.. for CQ160....

Denny                     k8do at aol.com