[3830] NA Sprint CW W4EF HP

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                    NA Sprint CW Contest - September

Call: W4EF
Operator(s): W4EF
Station: W4EF

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 4

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Op Time
---------------------
   80:   69   01:01
   40:   91   01:23
   20:   77   01:36
---------------------
Total:  237    Mults = 44  Total Score = 10,428

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Team: SCCC #1

Comments:

Saturday morning I hung 40 meter and 80 meter inverted-V's off of separate
feedlines via ropes and pulleys from the top of a 40' Rohn push-up mast at my
place in Littlerock, Ca. The desert winds got pretty high by the time I was
ready to extend it, so I could only get the push-up raised to 35' (fhe last 5'
will have to wait for another day). I had intended to use a Cushcraft R7000
vertical on 20 meters, but I discovered it had high VSWR, so with 1 hour and 30
minutes to go before the contest I lowered the 40 meter inverted-vee and then
measured out and soldered on parallel 20 meter dipole elements. I had been up
since 3:30 AM so it would have been nice to use the extra time for a
pre-contest nap, but the thought of loading either the 40 meter or 80 meters
dipole through a tuner on 20 was just too depressing to contemplate. As it
turned out using a matched dipole on 20 meters was hard enough - as it seemed
like my brethren with yagis were out Qing me by about 2 to 1 during the 1st
hour. On 40 and 80 meters I felt a little more competitive, but by hour four
the missing sleep from the night before was really starting to show itself as
busted sending. I've gotten a little better with N1MM in the Sprint, but I
still occasionally found myself in Run mode when I wanted to be in S&P mode and
vice versa especially toward the end when I was getting tired (my apologies for
the resulting improper callsign sequences). Aside from the problem with the
R7000 vertical and the aging Homo Sapien installed between the earphones, all
the equipment worked flawlessly. The highlight of the contest was having KY7M
call me in the last minute and give me #4 for the AZ multiplier. Great fun!

73, Mike W4EF.............


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