[3830] NAQP CW AA4LR Single Op LP

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                    North American QSO Party, CW - January

Call: AA4LR
Operator(s): AA4LR
Station: AA4LR

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: GA
Operating Time (hrs): 6

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    0     0
   80:   18    13
   40:   69    26
   20:   78    29
   15:   35    16
   10:   10     8
-------------------
Total:  210    92  Total Score = 20,370

Club: South East Contest Club

Team: 

Comments:

Antennas:
Cushcraft R-7000 (10-40m) at 4m high
80/40m trap dipole at 3m high (80m)

Equipment:
Kenwood TS-430S running 100 watts
Kenwood AT-250 auto-tuner

Comments:

Another modest contest effort from the Micro-Shack.

Got up early on Saturday to address a problem with the R-7000. Removed the
MN-7000 and pulled the board out to replace the 27 pF capacitor. I had
temporarily used a chain of four 100 pF caps in series, but these caps did not
have the required voltage rating, nor were they working correctly. Reassembled
the MN-7000 and put it back on the antenna brought initial disappointment --
the antenna analyzer showed no resonance anywhere. Once I hit the antenna with
a few watts of RF, this disappeared, and the R-7000 showed correct resonances.
Must be a slightly intermittent connection somewhere.

While setting up for this contest, I realized I had a problem. The keyer I use
with the TS-430S has been broken and on the workbench 100 miles away. No
problem, I'll just use computer keying. However, the cable that connects the
serial port from the computer to the rig was also 100 miles away. My only
option was to use a straight key. So, that's how I started.

About seven contacts into the contest, I had enough of that. What I needed was
to build a keying cable. Easy enough, just a connector, resistor, transistor,
wire and jack. Of course, all the parts to build such a cable were (you guessed
it) 100 miles away. A trip to the local Radio Shack procured the required parts
for about $20. (Have you noticed lately that Radio Shack has almost ZERO
parts?) Built it up and it worked like a champ. Unfortunately, it burned some
valuable contest time. 

10m had closed, and 15m was waning when I got back on. Worked a lot of good
stuff on 20m. 40m was excellent, and I even got to run for about a half hour on
that band. Then came the situation that generally happens -- 40m goes long, but
80m still isn't really open. At this point, I was really tired, so I decided to
pack it in rather than tough it out with the low 80m dipole. It really needs to
be about 20m higher to be effective.

The venerable TS-430S comported itself well through the contest. However, the
400 Hz filter and front-end is nothing like the Elecraft K2/100 I'm used to
using. It was very hard to separate signals on a few bands even using the
narrow filter. It was also a pain to type in a frequency to change bands.

The good news is that the R-7000 is working like it should, better than it ever
did at the old QTH. Being about 2m higher helps.


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