[3830] WPX DK2GZ Bad story (harddisk crash, generator crash)

[DK2GZ at aol.com]

Hello

this was a hard, hard, hard weekend !!!

The bad news:

Set up the station Friday afternoon.
All doing fine, OMNI 6+ and AL80A, generator, old TH6DXX
rotor is rotating since a week again.

Sleeping in the cabin on the hill top to secure the station.

Starting on Saturday around 5 utc (15 Meter SB/HP, Tribander)
Super condx a lot of qsos.

Sunday morning performed nicely until 11.00 utc:

Notebook keyboard frozen ???.
Restart the notebook.

Harddisk error, no operation system found,
my goodness logged 1042 qso until 11.10 utc.

Drove home to pickup the desktop pc.
2 hours later I am in business again.

15.30 utc the generator stopped !!
Find out that the srews of the fuel box getting out of the generator, find
the srews in the grass.
Fixed the srews again (very short srews I thought).

Restart the generator.
After 3 sec. the generator stopped again!
Whats goin on ???

Find out that the spark of the generator was broken.
Broken by the vibration of the loosing fuel box !!

Hidden to the next petrol station to get new srews and
a new spark.(It was Sunday and in Germany it is hard to
find a gas station with the right spark for the generator, esp. on Sunday!!!)

17.00 utc, back in business again at the contest qth.

Restart the the generator and the contest!!!

The good news:

Decided on Saturday evening to activate the autosave
function, you never know.

So the autosave saved the log at 11.00 utc and the
harddisk crashes at 11.10 utc, around 10 qso lost.

The generator problem lost only one qso, but I lost about 4 operating hours
on Sunday.

Ended the contest at 20.30 utc.
Save at home at 21.30 utc.
Reload the station car.

Falling in bed at 22.00 utc

I dont like Sundays like these !!!!!!

Score will be posted end of the week.

Thanks for the qsos and hope cuagn in the next contest.


73 de Harry, DK2GZ














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