[3830] NA Sprint CW W4EF/VE3(@VE3OI) HP

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                    NA Sprint CW Contest - February

Call: W4EF/VE3
Operator(s): W4EF
Station: VE3OI

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: ON
Operating Time (hrs): 4

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Op Time
---------------------
   80:   83    1:07
   40:   93    1:41
   20:   77    1:12
---------------------
Total:  253    Mults = 41  Total Score = 10,373

Club: Southern California Contest Club

Team: SCCC #2

Comments:

Rig: Elecraft K3, Ameritron AL-82, Win-Test

Antennas> 20M: TA34 Tribander
          40M: 2 El Yagi
          80M: Delta Loop 

As it would happen, my employer scheduled me for a week long business trip to
Toronto, Canada for the week which happened to straddle two of my most favorite
contests of the year:  the CQ 160 CW Contest and the CW Sprint. As a result, I
was either going to be in the air flying back to California during the CW
Sprint if I flew back to Los Angeles on Saturday or I’d be stuck in the
Toronto area if I opted to come home Sunday. Since coming back Sunday actually
left open the possibility of doing the Sprint, I opted to go that way. All I
needed to do was find a host.

In hopes of finding someplace to operate while in Toronto, I had posted a "CQ
Toronto" message to CQ-Contest about a week prior to my trip, but as of the
Saturday morning of the Sprint nobody had responded. I posted another identical
message to CQ-Contest that Saturday morning, but still nothing. That's when old
friend Pat N8VW steered me towards the Contest Club of Ontario's (CCO) Yahoo
group. I emailed the moderator and shortly thereafter I received a message back
from Don VE3XD with a copy of the solicitation he posted for me on the CCO list.
Later that afternoon while I was getting ready to walk around the Ontario
Science Center, I got a phone call from Dave Dudley VE3OI inviting me to come
to his QTH in rural Rockwood west of Toronto that evening to operate the
Sprint. Wow, this was amazing; I was actually going to get to operate! I was
even able to email Tim N6WIM back in Los Angeles so that I could get on an SCCC
Team.
 
I left the Science Center when it closed at 5PM and headed for Dave’s QTH. I
arrived around 6:30PM. It was after sunset, but there was still enough residual
light left to make out the outline of a big tower sitting next to the house.
Dave and I hadn’t discussed antennas on the phone, so I was thrilled to see
the tower. I would have been happy just to get on and make a few QSOs with a
G5RV and a straight key, but now all of a sudden I was looking at the
possibility of a competitive effort. That feeling was further reinforced when
Dave led me into his well-appointed shack where I found an Elecraft K3 sitting
next to an Ameritron AL-82 amplifier. Dave uses the Win-Test logging program
and had set it up for the Sprint with my call already loaded in.
 
Since I was unfamiliar with Win-Test and there wasn’t time to really get to
know its idiosyncrasies with respect to the variability of the Sprint exchange,
I decided to send all the exchanges by hand (my experience coming up to speed
with N1MM in the Sprint was pretty painful, so I decided to spare the contest
participants that side-effects of that sort of agony). The hand sending worked
out for the most part. It forced me to keep my speed down (after all these
years I still can’t send CW worth a d%mn), but otherwise it wasn’t an
impediment. 

In short I got what I was hoping for. For 4 hours, I was totally engrossed.
Dave station worked beautifully. He has band decoders connected to the K3, so I
didn’t have to worry about changing antennas. The only manual step required
for band changing was adjusting the AL-82, but Dave has preset labels so even
that was a snap.
 
While VE3 isn’t exactly rare DX, this was my first time doing ham radio from
a foreign entity, so I really have to hand it to Dave for his generous
hospitality, especially on such short notice. It was literally only a few hours
between the time when we first talked and the time when I was sitting in front
of his rig making QSOs. 

Great fun!

Mike W4EF


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