[3830] SS CW K3TN SO Unlimited HP

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                    ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW

Call: K3TN
Operator(s): K3TN
Station: K3TN

Class: SO Unlimited HP
QTH: MDC
Operating Time (hrs): 17

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:  222
   40:  371
   20:  157
   15:   90
   10:   41
------------
Total:  881  Sections = 79  Total Score = 139,198

Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club

Comments:

K3/KPA-500, TS-850/TenTec 425 to Windom OCF Dipole at 15m height

I love CW Sweepstakes - it is what got me into contesting all those years ago.
Operating at my single wire station, I know I'm not going to see my call in
bold in QST (well, hardly anyone sees their call in QST contest articles
anymore, but not even in the online results...) - especially in the MDC section
where we get just about every PVRC station on the air for SS in the battle
against NCCC. That means I'm just competing against myself - and if the weather
is nice on Sunday, I don't have to do the full day slog!

CW SS Saturday always lines up with major yard work, so I tried a new strategy:
no coffee in the am, yard work all morning, then a nap - then coffee to support
just going from the start until 0600 or so. That's a major accomplishment for
me, as I am rarely awake after 10pm local time. The strategy seemed to work
pretty well and at 2000, I went down to the shack and figured I'd see how
10/15/20 and were doing and decide on my opening strategy. I had already gotten
N1MM all freshened up and tested everything out during the week.

So, I sat down, fired everything up, took a sip of my steaming hot coffee,
QSYed the K3 to 10m and started tuning around. Well, I was tuning around but
the K3 was not - the VFO A freeze problem which has plagued this K3 since its
birth 2 years decided to come back right then - as we all know, anything with a
microprocessor in it is evil and has Murphy's Law hard-coded in non-volatile
memory.

So, I disconnected the 400 cables from the back of the K3, put it on the
workbench, removed the 800 tiny Phillips screws, took took the front panel
circuit board out, sprayed the contacts with DeOxit again, reseated the boards,
put the 799 tiny Phillips screws back, noticed the one tiny Phillips screw still
in the muffin tin, took some out, put that one in, put the rest back in,
reconnected the 400 cables on the back of the K3, fired it up - and it was
still frozen. A sharp drop onto the desk fixed that and at 2050 I was ready to
go.

I usually enter B/unassisted, as SS is one of the few contests where I can hold
run frequencies and I want to force myself to run more/S&P less - plus it is
just more traditional. But, since I hadn't had time to scope out the bands I
decided to go U/assisted and use the spotting to get a feel for the bands. So,
I connected N1MM to the Reverse Beacon Network skimmer network, limited to just
MD/PA/VA/WV skimmers and started on 10m.

A quick spin up and down 10 convinced me that the Windom's porcupine pattern on
10m was not a winner, and by then the RBN had filled the bandmaps and available
mult windows in N1MM, so I went to 15 and did CTRL-Arrow fast S&Ping up and
down 15 for while. But for an East Coast station I knew I had to be on 20, so
by 2130 I went there.

My usual approach for CW SS is to S&P till I find an open spot and then start
running. But I decided to try to use the N1MM Available Mult/Q window for fast
S&Ping (instead of CTRL-Arrowing my way up the band) and fell into an entire
new universe. I had the window sorting spots by time and would click on the top
entry, which had just come steaming fresh out of the skimmer ovens. Often, the
station would be just ending a CQ and I'd work them quickly and go back to the
top of the list. If they were in QSO, click on the 2nd in the list and away you
go.

This worked so well, my rate was high enough that I kept delaying settling down
to run but what was really interesting is that I lost any concept of where I was
in the band - I'd be clicking on someone on 14.003 and then someone on 14.065
but when working from the N1MM Available mult/Q you really don't see frequency,
just a list of calls. With the Alt-Arrow/bandmap approach you still have the
context of going up and down a band, but this was really weirdly disconnected
from the concept of a "band" - but really fast.

This strategy had a few downsides: (1) I kept running into K3MM, who was
obviously doing the same thing, and also has one of the skimmers and a much
better station. So, I started clicking on the second spot in the list, not the
first and that got my away from Tyler. (2) I wasn't clicking on any "dead
spots" which are usually the best way to find a run frequency that has just
been abandoned or neglected by a slow SO2Rer. 

So, I went back to my old way of working up 20m, found a run frequency and
settled down - and my rate dropped! Lots of people seduced by 10 and 15m made
it easier to find a run frequency, but meant fewer shoppers were strolling down
the 20m aisle. But I hung in there and rates picked up, so I went to 40 a bit
later than I normally would. I did the bandmap S&P, found a dead skimmer spot
and settled down to very nice rates - I had an 84 hour in here somewhere, and
ended up going to 80 much later than usual, somewhere around 0130 or so.
Normally, 80 will be my top QSO band, but this year it was 40.

I kept going on 80, with occasional visits to 40 until 0600 when I shut things
down. Somewhere in there I worked MO and NL for sections 78 and 79 - within 8
hours all I had left was NWT. On CW, I just focus on the score so I knew unless
I got lucky on Sunday while running on 20, I was not going to get a sweep.

Somewhere in here I had a keyboard glitch - the U key got sticky. I first
noticed it running on 80 when I worked someone who sent U for their precedence
and when I hit enter to send my return exchange N1MM sent "?" because I had
entered an incomplete exchange. Yikes - the poor guy had to resend everything.
So, I to really pound on the U key until I got the DeOxIt back out and sprayed
into the keyboard...

The weather was nice on Sunday so from 1300 - 1900 was all off-time, and we had
relatives over for dinner so after 0100 was off-time as well - I missed out on
the 80m fresh meat frenzies at the end. Most of the Sunday time was
power-S&Ping, with some stops for short runs. The skimmer spots started to get
very broken on Sunday for some reason - lots of busted calls, like KE9HN for
VE9HF. I ran across a VY1EI pileup on 10 at one point I threw my call in once
or twice to see if my fairy godmother was on duty - nope - and then moved on. 

Random notes: Fun working NH2T for a loooong PAC contact. Never heard W1AW -
doesn't any one put it on during SS?? Very few people seem to know what PREC is
- had to get fills for that. Not that many S stations on, that is probably not a
good thing. K1TN and I continued our contest on who could leave the longest
pause between the number and the T when working each other - I am going to
program a function key macro in N1MM just for that for next year.

About a 20% increase in score from last year, with about the same amount of
operating hours. N1MM worked flawlessly and no excuses or equipment problems
once the contest started. Next year I'm hoping to have a second antenna up and
be SO2R, with bad weather on Sunday to drive less off time...


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