[3830] SS CW K4XD SO Unlimited HP

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                    ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW

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

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: Raleigh, NC
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:  213
   40:  299
   20:  322
   15:   15
   10:     
------------
Total:  849  Sections = 79  Total Score = 134,142

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

Can we organize a DXpedition to NT before SS SSB?  Eric VY1EI is doing a
yeoman's job but those pileups are murder.  The poor guy gets spotted and
within 30 seconds there is continuous calling to the point he can't even finish
a QSO!  

OK, with that intro you can tell, I missed NT for the sweep!  In the two years
I've done SS I've made the sweep each time, and one year made it in SSB while
missing it in CW, so I'm not giving up... I heard VY1EI three times, twice on
15M and once on 20M, but it was in a cluster spot frenzy and I only heard him
make one Q each time before dropping out.  Despite my best attempts to position
myself CQ'ing close by, I was not among the blessed to receive a call!  I did
think of changing my CQ string to CQ NT K4XD PRETTY PLEASE NT CQ but pride got
the best of me.

Maybe the ARRL will offer an "slightly unclean sweep" shot glass (in almost
genuine lead crystal) for those of us with 79 sections.  They could raise a lot
of moolah that way.

So other than missing NT (I'm not bitter, really), how dit (sic) it go?  Pretty
well, best CW score here by a nice margin.  I was 12 minutes shy of 24 hours
compared to 18.5 last year, and worked about 300 more Q's.  Did more running
but I still find myself S&P'ing to warm up at the start of the contest.  By the
second day I can run at 25 - 28 wpm comfortably, with a few WriteLog fat finger
moments thrown in, but mostly sounding like I almost know what I'm doing. 
Surprised to have good runs on 20M and 40M right to the end, with rates in the
60's and 70's per hour, hitting the 80's briefly.  I know, that's a slow hour
at a big gun station, but it was big fun here at 'XD.  

For some reason I get more pumped up for SS than any other contest.  It's
probably because of the PVRC involvement and the clean sweep goal, two nice
incentives.  I think having it start late Saturday also gives me all day
Saturday to get the adrenaline going as well, compared to most weekend long
contests where I get home from work Friday night and the contest is already
going.  

In a moment of sanity I didn't make any major pre-contest station
"adjustments," but did add a second monitor to my PC which helped a lot.  I run
Alex's BandMaster program on the second monitor, since it shows the spot
comments which is where people put the section info.  I also run SpotCollector
from DXLab and set up its "Special Callsigns" feature to look for VY1EI and
other "rare" sections -- Spot Collector makes a voice announcement when a
designated call sign spot comes over the wire.  This lets you take a break from
the action and go listen to an amusing pileup, sort of like a crash at NASCAR or
a fight at a hockey game.

A few months back I started getting a really nasty buzzing noise on 160, 80 and
40 that comes and goes, and is only at night.  I did the usual circuit breaker
trick to try to find it, but since it only lasts a couple minutes at a time, it
was hard to track.  On Friday evening I had the house to myself so figured I
would really give it a try.  I tuned a portable SW radio to 1820, and set the
squelch so it would cut out when the noise stopped.  Flipped all the breakers,
no cigar.  I was sure it was a refrigerator or freezer based on the on/off
cycles, but it was still there with all the breakers off.  Rats!  I really
didn't relish the idea of going door to door and asking my neighbors to turn
off all their circuit breakers but it was starting to look like that kind of a
problem.  Then it hit me -- as I was walking the dog a couple weeks back, I
noticed a street light across the road that was cycling on and off every few
minutes!  Bingo!  When it's "off," it sends out the RF hash.  I watched out the
window and sure enough the light and the noise exactly correlated.  Progress
Energy has a form on their web site for reporting street light problems, and it
promises a fix in three business days.  Yee hah, the low bands are mine again.

I have my SO2R setup working but I can't say I really got a lot of Q's from it.
 I'll run the analysis later but I would say a few dozen Q's at most.  I might
have something configured wrong, but when I switch radios from WriteLog, the
radio I switch from stops transmitting immediately.  I was hoping that CQ on
radio 1 would continue while I plugged a call sign into the window for radio 2.
 But as soon as I put the cursor in radio 2's window, radio 1 stops
transmitting.  Not so good for holding a run frequency.   Before I got my
"fancy" SO2R setup with an EZMaster, I could do RTTY SO2R from WriteLog with
essentially two independent "channels" for both radio control and sound, one
for each radio from the PC.  Two cheap Donner Digital radio control and sound
card interfaces, and two cheap sound cards in the PC.  I think the difference
is that with the EZMaster, it uses the LPT port to select radio 1 or radio 2,
and that happens when you cursor into the radio's WriteLog QSO entry window. 
I'm guessing as soon as EZMaster switches radios, the PTT line drops and the
alternate radio stops TX.  

I'm also not so great at remembering to switch bands on radio 2 when I switch
bands on radio 1, and found myself listening on the TX band several times. 
Despite "heart in throat" syndrome, I don't seem to have knocked out the front
end of the non-transmitting radio, despite pumping a KW into the other antenna
that is within 150' of the RX antenna.  Yikes.

I started the contest S&P'ing on 20, and can see that in the first hour I had 3
40M Q's on the second radio and 41 Q's on the main rig.  I noticed the rate
seemed to drop when I was fiddling with both radios, as opposed to sticking
with one and S&P'ing as fast as possible.  Makes sense, as long as there is
enough "material" available to keep you busy with one radio, and given my
current limitations on overlapping the two radios, you're not going to go any
faster S&P'ing on two.

At 0200 I finally started CQ'ing on 40, and stayed at it for about 90 minutes. 
I was somewhere around 200 Q's at this point, although another quirk I've
noticed is that WriteLog skips QSO numbers in SO2R -- I haven't figured out the
sequence, but I suspect a QSO number is assigned as soon as you click in the QSO
window, and if you don't complete the QSO there but go back to the other window
and do one there, you get a new QSO number when you return to the first window.
 Fortunately the Score window shows the real number of Q's, which by the ened of
the contest was about 30 Q's behind the number I was sending.  It's a feature --
"Writelog 10x:  intimidate the competition with QSO number inflation!"

Went full time to 80M at 0430 and stayed there until 0630.  About 320 Q's in
the log, and with the rate dropping into the teens and my eyelids dropping into
my cheeks, it was time to hit the sack.  I'm totally amazed by the guys who do
48 hour contests wall to wall.  You are truly iron men and ladies.  

Back at the dials at 1100 and stayed on 80M until QSO 400 and 1300, then up to
40 for both S&P and running until 1450.  The mid-West and West were both in
nicely on 20, with LAX, UT, SDG and ND all joining the happy mults in the
scorebox,  so I stuck with 20 until 1739.  Took about 40 minutes to shower and
stretch, and then back to 20M where I S&P'd for a while until finding a slot at
14013 and had a nice long run there.  Took WX3B's advice and "patrolled" the run
frequency sending a polite "get your #$ out of here" message to any erstwhile
intruders.  (Don't get excited, I really sent "pse qsy up qrl tu" but really
was feeling territorial and wanted to send the former!).  Two hours and 100
Q's, with some rates in the 70/hour range.  Felt good!  In past contests I had
left the bottom of the range to the big dogs, but here I just looked for the
first 500 Hz wide slot and dropped in.  Thanks for the spots too!

The rate on 20 stayed up until 0000 and I moved to 40M only as it dipped below
40/hour.  Found another nice low slot on 40M at 7015, and stayed there for 90
minutes and another 100 Q's.  Only went to 80M because it was getting late and
didn't want to miss something... yet another nice low slot at 3517, but the
rate never went much above the mid 30's so I went back to 40M with 40 minutes
to go and found a good rate (and slot at 7013) again until the big slowdown at
the very end.

So that was it... one short of 850 claimed Q's, hopefully will stay above 800
with log checking, and one cigar short of a box on sections.  Thanks to
everyone for a lot of fun... now to get psyched for SS SSB... my ears are
starting to hurt already!

73,
Rowland K4XD


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