[3830] SS CW W6YX(N7MH) School Club HP

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                    ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW

Call: W6YX
Operator(s): N7MH
Station: W6YX

Class: School Club HP
QTH: Stanford University
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:  152
   40:  389
   20:  587
   15:  136
   10:   11
------------
Total: 1275  Sections = 80  Total Score = 204,000

Club: Northern California Contest Club

Comments:

I entered in the school club classification that was opened to alumni this year.
 I'm hoping that some of our student members will participate on SSB and perhaps
more of the other university club stations will also be active then.

I used the spotting network so this would otherwise qualify as an Unlimited
single-op entry.  The station was shared with the multi-op effort of K6SU.

I had a second radio but it was running barefoot and was usually on the same
band that I was transmitting on.  I mostly used it to check new spots and then
would do a quick QSY of the run radio to that frequency to work the spot.  I'm
guessing that I probably worked about 20 stations with the second radio when I
was listening on a different band.

We were able to have both stations (W6YX and K6SU) simultaneously running on
the same band only on 20 and 40 by carefully rotating the big Yagis (6 el on
20, 4 el on 40) to null out most of the interference heard from the fixed
antennas (5 el on 20, inverted vee on 40).  Most of my time on 40 was spent
running on the inverted vee while K6SU had the 4-element Yagi.  I'm guessing
that my score might have been slightly higher if I had been using the Yagi
instead of the inverted vee.

I could work spots found on my second radio near my own run frequency but
missed a bunch of stations that were near K6SU's frequency because it was
impossible to copy anyone weak within 10 to 15 kHz on either side.  We were
both using FT1000MPs.  Maybe I could have gotten closer if we both were using
K3s.  Dual CQing might have helped but transmitting that much on the second
radio would have interfered with at least one of the other run radios and I
didn't have a separate transmit antenna for 80 meters. 

We had all of our HF antennas working with the exception of the 80-meter
4-square so it was possible to leave our C31XR pointed to the north which came
in handy when working VY1, KL7, VE7 and WA and OR stations on 20.  I'd worked
all mults by midnight except for NL.  I saw VO1TA spotted in the early morning
on 20 and worked him and then had VO1BZM call me just a few minutes later.

In past years I have spent much of my time scouring the bands searching for new
stations to work.  With the reverse beacon network this is mostly unnecessary. 
There were only a handful of stations that I found CQing that hadn't already
been spotted.  These seemed due to skip zones, weak signals on 80 that weren't
heard by the existing skimmers which are mostly in the east, or stations higher
than 70 kHz from the band edge which weren't being spotted by the RBN.


73,
-Mike, N7MH


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