[3830] W6EEN SS Phone (plus short

[Mark Curran]

Call:     W6EEN  
Section:  Orange California (ORG)
Class:    High Power (B), Multi-Single (MS)

80   86    Dipole at 100'
40   407   4L monster beam at 110'
20   583   6L 100' and LP at 50'
15   437   6x6 (45 and 90')
10   34    6x6x6 (30',60' and 90')

79 sections x 1547 QSOs x 2pts/Q = 244,426 claimed score


Operators: W6EEN (Don), W6AQ (Dave), W6ORD (Norman), and me (KI7WX/6)

Contest club Affiliation: SCCC

Equipment:  Dual KNWD 950SDX (interlocked for Sweeps), pair of
Alpha 87As, PC network with CT9.20, Packetcluster(tm) and various 
other operating aids.
          
Many thanks to the Doughty's for hosting another contest event
from W6EEN.  It's always a treat to operate from Don's station.


Before talking about SS, all the operators at W6EEN send congrats to 
Ron (K6XC) and Helen who missed sweeps due to their daughters 
wedding.  A tough choice to abandon us thereby missing the best phone
event of the year, but we forgive them and understand.  Kind of....


We started running on 20M and chasing extras Q's from station 2 on 10 and 15. 

A typical phone start with 100++ rates for 3.5 hours and then a move to 40M.
40M played very well and we had several more hours in the 70-100 range.  80M
was also decent and provided the local mults.  We went until about 12:30am
local
and then pulled the plug for a nice 6hr sleep.  Retrospectively, we should
have gone another 60-90 minutes on 40M as the rates were good and they weren't

any better Sunday morning when we came back.  Sunday was rather slugish with
hour after hour of 50-70 rate with only one 100+ hour :( 15M was good with
third teir signals workable.  20M noise was high enough to obscure the weaker
signals
here.  10 never played although we listened and called second radio Q's (a
lot)
in hope of catching a good opening. Maybe next year...

The Sweep:  Really no sweat this year, although we did have to wait 
for Sunday morning.  Thanks to Ken (K6LA) for stopping by and putting
VY1JA in the log early Saturday.  I'm sure I said "Hi Jay", so apologies
to Ken.  Missing MAR, NL and PR after first night.  Don worked PR right
away Sunday on 20M and I went to 15M and just called CQ for a few hours. 
VO1GO came by to say hello, and a very short bit later VY2CC came
by with a single digit QSO number.  Worked a couple more of each tough
RAC section a bit later on 15M for insurance.  We had zero single mults
this year which is spiffy.  Big SS kudos to all the guys who braved 
weather and aurora putting on the more difficult sections.

All told another fun contest from Don's fine station.  We'll be looking for
bigger numbers next year due to improving operators, more sun spots, and
planned station advancements including a 6x6 stack on 20M and a 3L 80M yagi.
Don's got the only aluminium ranch in Palm Springs and it will be another
exciting year from the desert in 1998!!

Cheers,

Mark Curran  KI7WX
mark_curran at sequana.com

Visit the W6EEN Web Page (hosted by K6XC) at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rluttringer/w6een.html


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