[3830] VE3KZ ARRL DX Phone SOAB QRP

[Robert Nash]

Hi all:

I discovered I could throttle down the TS-950SDX to 5 W PEP on SSB a
couple of weeks ago by judicious adjustment of the speech compression.
This QRP level is 24 dB below the AL-1200 HP I used last year in this
contest. The operating time was approximately the same both years,
15.5 vs 14.5 hours. Last year, 1018 Q's & 244 Mult. This year, 44% of
the Q's and 80% of the Mults for 35% of the HP score. Interesting.
Of course 10 was better this year, at least on Saturday..

Luckily I couldn't operate much on Sunday. The aurora was really
rolling on 15 and 20. GW4BLE sounded like he was in Murmansk.
Glad I worked him in Saturday.

QRP is certainly an interesting challenge. Sort of like working everyone off
the back of a good beam!  Some of the ops have magnificent ears and there
are some stations I couldn't work on any band! Of course the QRP station
is not always weak! One of the G's on 15m was having trouble with
QRM on his previous contacts and commented that my signal was much
stronger and easier to copy. Of course I had to tell him my power but he
was pretty sceptical!

By the way there was a raging snow storm going on all through Friday
night and Saturday and the 10m antenna went weird late on Saturday.
Looks like the 50mph winds might  have loosened something.
Always have a backup vertical or dipole!

VE3KZ  SO AB QRP UA

   BAND   Raw QSOs   Valid QSOs   Points   Countries
______________________________________________________
   80SSB       8            8             24          8
   40SSB      12          12           36         11
   20SSB     111         111        333        56
   15SSB     214         214        642        79
   10SSB     100         100        300        42
______________________________________________________
Totals        445         445       1335       196

    Claimed Score =  261,660 points.

Equipment: TS-950SDX  5W PEP
  10m: 5el @ 50'
  15m: 5el @ 75'
  10/20m: 3el/3el @ 100'
  40m: dipole @ 70' and Vertical
  80m: Fan Inverted Vee @ 60'
   TRLog v6.36, 80486-33MHz

73 Bob VE3KZ
ve3kz at rac.ca




--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/3830faq.html
Submissions:              3830 at contesting.com
Administrative requests:  3830-REQUEST at contesting.com
Problems:                 owner-3830 at contesting.com