[3830] BARTG W7WW SO Expert HP

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                    BARTG Spring RTTY Contest

Call: W7WW
Operator(s): W7WW
Station: W7WW

Class: SO Expert HP
QTH: AZ
Operating Time (hrs): 
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pts  Mults
------------------------
   80:    3    3      
   40:  101  101      
   20:  214  214      
   15:  316  316      
   10:  113  113      
------------------------
Total:  747  747   167  Total Score = 748,494

Club: 

Comments:

Well this contest was a hoot, even with the poor band conditions.
This was my second experience with SO2R, the first from my QTH.  
I have now joined the SO2R arms race! In the week before the contest,
I borrowed some single band Dunestar bandpass filters from K6LL
and put up some 10/15/20 fanned dipoles for the second radio, since
my main antenna for those bands is a tribander.  The fanned dipoles
turned into a barrel of snakes, but I finally got them squared away
for 15 and 20 only. I had to cut out the 10 meter one, because it was
messing up the swr on 15, and they were getting hopelessly tangled.  

The plan was to run high power on the run radio and 200 watts on the
S&P radio, using 200W from my new (new to me, anyway) MK-V, which had
just arrived within the past few days. In doing some testing on Friday
morning, I blew up Dave's 15 meter BPF. In a phone conversation with
Dunestar, it turns out that those BPF's are not rated for 200 watts on
RTTY. I was getting pretty dejected at this point, because it looked like
all my SO2R plans were heading south. Then, five hours before the contest,
Dave called and told me that he could wire up some manual control switches
so that I could use his two six-band Dunestar boxes, if I promised to throttle
the MK-V back to 100 watts output. He got the switches wired up, and we
installed the new BPF's just two hours before the start of the contest!

During the contest, things went pretty well, despite the poor band 
conditions. The 100 watts worked surprisingly well on the S&P radio, with
the fanned dipoles being surprisingly effective on 15 and 20. On Sunday
morning, just as 10 and 15 were starting to open, a big thunderstorm
passed through, and I had to turn everything off for a while. I may have
missed some EU mults during that time, but EU was tough from out here. Sunday
wasn't much better than Saturday. Very little was heard from eastern Europe
especially. The rate got pretty slow on Sunday, so I did a few things around
the house.

Thanks, everybody, for the Q's, and see you in the next one.

Dave or Red, W7WW


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