[3830] ARRL 10 K4XD SO CW LP

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                    ARRL 10-Meter Contest

Call: K4XD
Operator(s): K4XD
Station: K4XD

Class: SO CW LP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 11.5

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  135    40
  SSB:           
-------------------
Total:  135    40  Total Score = 21,600

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

My pre-contest goals were a clean sweep and 100K points, but I fell a little
short... no wait, that was that other contest...  Actually, my goal was to do
better than last year, and pick up a few more states towards 10M WAS, which I
did.  

I got home from work an hour before the contest and started setting things up
and checking out the band.  Made a few pre-contest Q's with LU and CX stations
with no problem.  I tried HP and LP -- my report was 579 LP and 599 HP so I
decided to go for the LP category. As most of you probably know, LP was plenty
for the long distance contacts, but I sure could have used HP to reach two
states over for most of the contest.

When the starting gun went off at 0000, I worked three LU stations in quick
succession.  This is going to be great!  Little did I know that was going to be
the last DX except VE until Sunday morning at 1530.  For the next couple of
hours I alternated between S&P and CQ'ing, picking up NC (mostly loud) and VA
(mostly not) stations.  One surprise was N5UL in NM at 0144 - isn't this band
supposed to be dead at night?!  After 3 hours Friday night, went to bed with a
whopping 24 Q's in the log.

Saturday morning I got a taste of VHF contesting.  Scatter, ping... all I know
is "sporadic E" is very sporadic!  It also seems to be smart enough to know
when the call sign is coming, and that's when it takes a dive.  Typical
sequence:  search up the band and hear a very faint, un-copiable signal. 
Fiddle wih filters.  Makes no difference but passes the time.  Listen for a
minute.  Suddenly there's another signal at S7 blasting in my ear.  No, it's
the same signal, just flakey scatter propagation that has the ability to
enhance half a dit to ear splitting volume.  With enough patience, the other
guy's CQ will fade up and then it's time to pounce.  Send my call.  Wait in
anticipation of hearing my call coming back... but instead hear "CQ TEST..."
like cold water in the face.  Repeat.

One of the writeups for the contest said "10M may be quiet most days, but it
will explode with signals at 0000 when the contest starts..."  Hmmm, apparently
the propagation gods didn't pay attention to the script.  By Saturday afternoon
at 3:00, I had a whopping 42 Q's in the log.  This was hard work!!  Then at
2224, K5NA came booming in, followed by another TX station.  And they sounded
like real signals, not the fluttery faint ones I'd been hearing for everything
but NC stations for the past 22 hours.  At 2312, I wa surprised to have an IA
station come back to my CQ at 20 over S9, followed rapidly (at least by this
contest's standards!) by IL, NE, OK, WI , and MN stations.  We were having
dinner guests and here I was with the first real opening of the contest!  Oh
well, duty calls so I left the dials at 2337. Sounds like I missed a couple of
good hours.  I snuck back to the radio at 0247 and picked up an AZ mult.  By
the time the guests left, the band was dead and so was I.  

I fired things up Sunday morning at 1200, and although the propagation was back
to scatter and sporadic E, I managed to pick up NJ, ON and NS.  Things moved to
the south at 1300 and I got FL, MS and GA, then back north to OH and WV.  The
1200 and 1300 hours were smoking (!) with 10 and 8 Q's respectively, then we
crept back down to almost nothing until 1600 when the best opening of the
contest yielded 53 Q's in 2 1/2 hours.  The rate meter was glowing red hot at
25/hour.  Then back to normal, closing things out with a colossal yawn as the
band yielded 1 Q/hour for the last 3.  

Highlights were working HP, D2 and having ZS1EL call me while I was CQ'ing with
low power on the hexbeam pointing due west.  Love that equatorial ionosphere. 
Now if we could just move the ham population of Germany to South Africa, we'd
have a humdinger of a contest.

So... 135 Q's, 40 mults, and a new fondness for sunspots.  It's got to get
better than this next year, right?!

PS:  To those of you following my saga at the other end of the HF spectrum, I
think I figured out my antenna problem that was causing the Tokyo Hy-Power to
fault when I tried pumping more than 200 W into the 160M and 80M antennas. 
Seems like it only happens when the K9AY loop antenna is plugged into the Icom
756PII's receive antenna jack.  And, if I turn the K9AY preamp off, it doesn't
happen.  Now why this would cause the output of the THP to think it was talking
to high SWR and shut down, I haven't exactly figured out... but at least I have
a fix and can run HP on 160M again!


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