[3830] CaQP K6Z M/MCntyExp HP

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                    California QSO Party

Call: K6Z
Operator(s): W6PH, KI6VC, K6VR, W1MD, K6ZZ
Station: K6Z

Class: M/MCntyExp HP
QTH: INYO
Operating Time (hrs): 27

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs
--------------------
  160:    60     35
   80:   195     55
   40:   408    271
   20:   561    769
   15:   170    173
   10:             
    6:             
    2:             
--------------------
Total:  1394   1303  Mults = 58  Total Score = 393,704

Club: 

Comments:

For this year's CQP, our crew returned to W6PH's cabin QTH just outside of Lone
Pine in the Owens Valley.  It's a great location with the Owens Valley in the
foreground and Mt Whitney staring down on you from behind.  Last year we dang
near froze to death, but this year the WX was a bit better.  Temperatures were
decent but we had some thunderstorms, wind, and lot's of bugs to contend with
this time out.

We set up Field Day style with two AB-577 military surplus masts and a homebrew
35' tower trailer.  Antennas were a homebrew 3 element 20M beam, Cushcraft
402-CD and Cushcraft A3S for 10M and 15M.  We also put up an 80M sloper, Hygain
Hytower and 160M Inverted-L to work the low bands with.  Kurt's homebrew 20M
beam worked great.  It's a keeper for sure.

We set up one station in the cabin, one on the porch and a third in KI6VC's RV.
 Rigs were an Elecraft K3, an ICOM IC-7000 and an ICOM PRO-III each with an
amplifier.  We switched logging software this year to N1MM Logger in a three PC
wireless network.

I'm beginning to think there's no such thing as being 100 percent prepared for
a radio contest.  If you think you're ready, check again!  Something WILL
happen.  By late Friday afternoon all the stations and antennas were set up,
checked out, and ready to go.  Some quick checks for inter-station
interference, and then it was time for a BBQ and a few cold 807's.

After a tasty Saturday morning breakfast, it was time to man battle stations
and get ready to roll.  At T-15 minutes, Murphy finally showed up.  We
discovered a high SWR on the 40M beam.  Are PL-259's supposed to spin freely on
the end of your feedline?  After a fast connector replacement, we were once
again ready to roll.  The bell rang and we were off and running.  Wait a
minute, how come our PC's say we're operating in the 7QP not the CQP?  Duh,
what's up Doc?  Ok, we restarted and now were ready to go.....again.  After a
few minutes we noticed the serial numbers started incrementing by 3 or 4 on two
of the three PC's.  What gives?  Perhaps RF in the network?  We stopped and
restarted 3 times, but the problem continued.  We certainly can't operate like
this.  After about 75 minutes of false starts, we were about to dump N1MM and
try something else when we noticed that one of the PC's had a newer version of
N1MM loaded on it.  Bingo.  We reloaded an older version of N1MM and the
logging problems were finally under control.  Certainly the worst was now
behind us.  We were CQing on 40M CW but the band seemed very dead.  After some
testing we found the receiver in the K3 had gone deaf.  Turned out to be a bad
PIN diode on the KXV3 board.  We had to tear everything down and set up another
ICOM IC-7000.  After doing so, we operated pretty much problem free until Sunday
morning at which point we discovered the A3 SWR was now sky high.  After some
troubleshooting we found the balun had crapped out.  We took the antenna down
and jumpered around the balun and put it back up again.  That got us through to
the end.

Overall, we had a great time.  We wanted to improve on last year's score which
we managed to do.  For the past two years we ended with 57 multipliers missing
NT each time.  This time we had all 58 mults in the log before sundown Saturday
with NT worked several times.  Can we bank a few of those Q's and use them next
year?

Thanks the NCCC for another great contest and everyone for the QSO's!

73, Bob K6ZZ


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