[3830] ARRL 160 AA4LR Single Op LP

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                    ARRL 160-Meter Contest

Call: AA4LR
Operator(s): AA4LR
Station: AA4LR

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: GA
Operating Time (hrs): 5.0

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 292  Sections = 57  Countries = 2  Total Score = 34,810

Club: South East Contest Club

Comments:

Equipment:
Elecraft K2/100 w/ KAT100 running 80-100 watts
15m Shunt-Fed Tower with 25 60 foot radials.

Comments:

A part-time effort here. Had a blast Friday night calling CQ and running at
70-100 q/hr. Worked 44 states the first night in just 4 hours. Missed only RI,
ND, WY, MT, HI and AK. Heard W7SE in WY both nights, and spent several minutes
calling him. He apparently was deaf, because all I got was an "AA"? out of
him.

Since I was having such a blast running, I didn't hunt around for multipliers
too much. Only DX was P40 and OK1, which I worked as I passed by the DX window.


An antenna problem forced me to QRT after about an hour on the second night. I
use an L-network to match the shunt on 160m, and then bend the resonant
frequency with the tuner. The first night, I was calling CQ around 1820 kHz for
about five minutes, when the SWR jumped up. Antenna analyzer showed the resonant
frequency shifted from about 1825 to 1875 kHz. I compensated by moving up to
around 1870 kHz to call CQ.

Second night, similar problem happened. After about an hour calling CA on 1825
kHz, SWR jumped up. Resonant frequency was now about 1970 kHz. I went out and
tried to re-adjust the matching network, but couldn't get the frequency down
below about 1930 kHz. I kept running out of capacitance. 

Worked lots of SECC members, including K4BAI, W8JI, KD3GC, K4EA, K4HAL, and
several others.

Lots of fun. Hopefully, I can fix the antenna problem before the Stew Perry. I'm
tremendously impressed with how well the shunt-fed tower works. Although it is
just over 1/10 wavelength high, I could work just about everything I heard, and
calling CQ was very effective, even with 100 watts.


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