[3830] 7QP KI7MT SOMixed HP

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                    7th Call Area QSO Party

Call: KI7MT
Operator(s): KI7MT
Station: KI7MT

Class: SOMixed HP
QTH: Helena, MT
Operating Time (hrs): 17

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  Dig Qs
----------------------------
  160:                   
   80:   19     62      0
   40:   52    253      0
   20:   32    411     49
   15:                   
   10:                   
    6:                   
    2:                   
----------------------------
Total:  103    726     49  Mults = 56  Total Score = 106,848

Club: 

Comments:

Two thoughts sum up this contest for me:

"It Was a Allot of Work !! " **-- and --** "It Was A Lot Of Fun !!"

With the number of "World Class Contesters" in 6/7-Land, I have no illusion of
ever winning nor placing high in the 7QP, so I set my sights on the MT-High
Score as the goal.

I put up 4 specific antennas for this contest: 1/4 wave 20M vert @ 16ft, 1/8
wave 20M vert @ 8ft, 40M NVIS @ 7ft w/3 Reflectors at 01ft (NE/SW Axis), 280ft
Square Loop @ 55ft fed with 600 ohm Laddder Line.

How did it pan out? 20M worked well coast to coast (and DX), 40M was great for
6/7 land, but as expected, tough to New England & 4-land. 80M was superb but
the activity had died down by the time I chose to shift from 40M. I was on 80M
for about 1 hour, which was clearly not enough time. All my 80M CW Q's were in
the last 10/15 that I operated with W0BH/KS being the last catch @ 06:56(Z).

I'm sure I stayed on 40M's too long, but the band & signal quality after sunset
was hard to pass up. Heading NE to New England on 40M's was a bit rough at
times, as I had very high noise levels (QRN) that seemed to come an go. I
suspect it was the Winter Storm that dumpped (2) feet of snow on us Thursday /
Friday.

Highlights:

General:  I know that if your serious about contesting, we're not supposed to
"Chit-Chat" during Q's, but it was hard to resist not saying hello to folks
that say things like "Hey, you anywhere Near East Helena, my son lives there
and we just visited him, it's beautiful there" or "We are operating a Special
Event Station from a High School" or "Your my First Ever Contact to MT" or
"We're operating from a Submarine Museum in Ohio" or "Wow, your +30 and the
Audio is Superb, I'm gonna send you a Card, let me make sure I've got your call
correct !". Although this is a contest, I have to consider these brief pauses to
be good things.

I also had Q's with several parts of MT that I've never heard before on 80M's,
from fixed staitons, not mobi's. They said they never hear the Helena area and
was nice to have a somewhat "Local" QSO.

Signals:  Many, Many Huge signals, too many to list but one in particular that
I must comment on is Larry, K7MI in ORCOO. Larry has what I consider to be a
Super Station for Contesting ( see for yourself www.k7mi.com ), and it's
expected that he'd put out quality signals, but on 40M with my RF Gain cut back
to S5/S6 to curtail staic / noise, he knocked me out of the chair with a Stout
+60, and I mean "Pegged" my FT-1000MP to +60db.  The other one that stands out
is WA5ZUP. Everytime I work John, not only in this contest, but also those of
the past, he's +30 here irrespective of the band being worked. The same with
Rich, KE1B in CA.

7QP / NEQP / INQP: Having all three QSP's running concurrently is of great
benifit I think. When one area seemed to calm down, one of the other two seemed
to pick up the slack. Now that several Major Logging Programs provide support
for these three, logging is a breeze.

Run Rates:  Although this may not be out of the norm for big gun stations, I
was well please with the rates I managed to squeek out:

-- 104 Q's @ 103/hr followed by 84 Q's @ 71.8
-- 4 runs over 75 Q's per/hr


Lowlights:

Conditions:  At times the bands were stellar, but I had bouts of intense QRN
(S9+ on 40M's) which made SSB Q's really tough, some of which I just could not
complete. Toughest direction was to New England. The antenna selection /
choices I made probably did not help much with this.

Operating:  I caused some QRM on 80M SSB. I didn't hear these fellas in a local
round table as I had 1800HZ filters in, but a fella came up and said I was
really hammering their round table, which was baout 3Kc's away. He nicely asked
if I'd move up .5 or so, and I said no problem and didn't mean to interfere with
their QSO. I don't like to be QRM'd anymore than anyone else, nor do I like to
be the cause of it. Contests have a band enough image as it is, so anything (I)
or (We) can to in order to prevent adding to this problem, should be done.

Multi's:  I did not get enough multi's, which is clearly obvious from my final
score. I don't know why, I suppose I should have done more S&P rather than RUN,
but with the RUN rates I was getting, it was very hard to think about spinning
the dial. I need to re-think this for next year.


Overall / General Comments:

As stated above, this was allot of work, both in preparation as well as
operating, but it was certainly allot of fun and the 7QP ranks high in my list
of favorite contests.

TNX to all the contest sponcers / coordinators (  7QP / NEQP / INQP ) and to
all those who participated. I think a good time was had by most, at least from
the comments I've read and heard on the air.

See you in CQWPX !!

Logs will be uploaded to LoTW & eQsl for those whom are interested.

Station:
Rig: FT-1000MP
Interface: US Interface, Navigator, K1EL v2 keyer
AMP: AL-1500 ( Ave: 700W )
Tunner: Palstar, AT5K
Antennas: 2x 20M Verticals, 40M NVIS, 80M Loop.

73's
KI7MT
"The Hermit On The Hill"
Helena, Montana


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