[3830] NA Sprint CW N3BB LP

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                    NA Sprint CW Contest - September

Call: N3BB
Operator(s): N3BB
Station: N3BB

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 4
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Op Time
---------------------
   80:   91        
   40:  137        
   20:  125        
---------------------
Total:  352    Mults = 47  Total Score = 16,544

Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club

Team: Dashers

Comments:

I feel very fortunate to have made this score. Things have been extremely hectic
here and among other things, I spent three hours out on the hillsides in 95
degree heat Saturday trying unsuccessfully to find why my west Beverage
receiving antenna is open. That does not seem like a difficult engineering
problem, but so far I have replaced the impedance match and have walked and
checked the line and have tried to bypass things. Zilch. So I was prepared to
be deaf on 80 meters to the west, as the east Beverage just does not hear off
the side. Fortunately, we had a quiet night with clear skies and no close
storms, and I was able to listen on the transmit slopers and was able to hear
most if not all the callers/stations to the west. At least I think so. That was
a break. 

We had a full crew of workers scheduled at seven AM today (Sunday) to make some
emergency repairs to the guest house where the station is located, and so it was
up bright and early to "manage," and I use that term loosely, the repairs, which
required a large two stage scaffold inside the house to reach a high interior
ceiling. What a mess! It's now eleven and they just left. It was a successful
job. My wife will not divorce me, at least not today. So doing the Sprint in
between all this plus other stuff was tough. Again, I'm amazed it went so
well.

Great conditions on twenty. The band simply never closed, and finally it was
necessary to work on 40 and 80 rather than on 40 and 20. I called endless
second radio CQs and got many answers, plus many if not all of the difficult
mults that way. Forty meters is a weird band these days, with a lot of poor
skip and strange signals, but there were signals to copy the entire contest on
40. I made a silly error and operated on 40 with only the small shorty forty
two element yagi pointed west for quite a while, as I selected that antenns to
try and hear a weak six, but forgot to put the switch back on both the shorty
forty and the large three element Telrex to the east. That did't help, but I
still seemed to get callers and make contacts. 

The final hour was tough on 80 and I ended up having trouble finding stations
to call that weren't already worked, so ended up mostly tuning up and down and
calling CQs with one radio every spacing per the rules. That was not great and
I'm sure there was some upsides with two radios, but I seemed to run out of
mental gas and defaulted to SO1R on 80 the last thirty minutes at least. 

The four hour totals were 105, 96, 86, and 67. Those total 354 but include one
dupe and one contact that must be removed. 

Worked all the mults heard, but ended up missing VT, DE, KY, NM, UT, NV, and
ID.  Worked VE3, 5, and 7. Never did hear any of the missing VE or US mults.
Thanks to the mobile station in ND for a pleasant surprise. Other one-station
states/provinces were MT, NH, KS, LA, KP2, AR, WY, AK, RI, NE, AL, SD, MO, OK,
and SK. It shows how thin the coverage is, and how much we need those stations.


It's a thrill working so many really excellent CW operators. I used 38 WPM
almost the entire time except when a much slower station called, or at the end
on 80 when I used 35 WPM and slowed to 32 at times. There were numerous
repeats, especially for the number, this time. I asked many stations to repeat
this, trying for minimum errors. We shall see.....

Thanks to Tree and the BARC and the ARRL/NCJ for sponsoring the CW sprint, and
for the amazing support of the 3830 team for this and all the other coverage.

Jim N3BB


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