[3830] SS SSB N5DO Multi-Op LP

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                    ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, SSB

Call: N5DO
Operator(s): N5DO, KE5OG
Station: N5DO

Class: Multi-Op LP
QTH: WTX
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:   57
   40:  324
   20:  153
   15:  281
   10:  335
------------
Total: 1150  Sections = 80  Total Score = 184,000

Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club

Comments:

It was a last minute decision to go low power.  I'm not sure when I last used my
amplifier, but it has been at least a year.  On Friday afternoon I went through
the bands marking the settings on the amp.  All was well until I reached 20M
where the amp started arcing.  I had to lower the power down to about 400 watts
before it would work, then went to 40M where the same thing happened.  Since
this is the first year to operate Multi-Op Low Power as a formal category, we
decided to switch to LP.  

The N5DO station has one short (55 foot) tower with two antennas on it:  a
standard 3-element SteppIR at 30 feet, which is fixed in a NE-SW direction, and
a relatively new DB-18 at 55 feet, which rotates.  High winds last spring caused
the DB-18 to spin, breaking the pin on the rotator and sawing through the
control cables and coax.  Those problems were fixed this summer, but one of the
elements on the DB-18 appears to not move, making the antenna into a dipole on
40M and a 2 element beam on the high bands.

Usually the top antenna is better than the bottom antenna, even with only two
elements.  But this weekend the bottom antenna was almost always better than
the top one except, of course, on 40M.  So most of the contest we were
handicapped by using an antenna that wouldn't rotate and was pretty low.

Given all that, it went very well.  We tried using two rigs in this contest for
the first time since we tried it some years ago.  That attempt led to total
failure, because without a lock out device we could not stop transmitting both
rigs at the same time.  We ended up not submitting our log and went back to
using one radio, with one operator at a time, in our multi-op operations.  This
year we used the N6TV design for a lock-out using two K3s.  It worked very well
-- we constantly tried to key both rigs at once and the result is to shut down
both transmitters at  once (and some obligatory swearing).  Not only is
impossible to break the rules, it also teaches you to check before
transmitting.

Thanks to Bill, KE5OG, for the use of his K3 and P3 and doing the heavy lifting
during some good runs.  We were especially impressed with a great run he had
during the last 45 minutes on 40M -- it seemed like there were a lot of
stations available to work even that late in the contest.


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