[3830] CQ160 CW WI9WI Single Op HP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW

Call: WI9WI
Operator(s): WI9WI
Station: WI9WI

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Winter, WI
Operating Time (hrs): 15

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 621  State/Prov = 57  Countries = 13  Total Score = 100,450

Club: Minnesota Wireless Association

Comments:

I drove up to the cabin Friday and got there about 3 PM. After I shoveled a path
in, unloaded and got the fire started, I set up and discovered that the inverted
L had an infinite SWR. I also have a full sized dipole at 60 ft center fed with
ladder line. That worked fine. But the L tends to outperform it. The L hangs
off my 100 ft tower with about 75 ft vertical and the rest sloping downward to
about 45 ft at the end, and then a rope to a convenient tree on my neighbor's
property. So I waded thru the snow (only about a foot) and discovered that the
feedpoint connector was broken. That took only about 5 min to fix, and I put
the analyzer on it at the feed and it checked out fine. By the time I got on
the air it was dark about 5:30 or so. I couldn't tune the L. So I used the
dipole for a while. I then started checking out the L and after a lot of
screwing around with the analyzer and swapping patch cables I figured the
problem was at the antenna itself. It would only load sporadically. So I put my
boots on and went the 150 ft to the tower in the dark. The feed looked fine. I
figured somehow the wire was hitting the tower or one of the beams in the wind.
But it was snowing hard and with the headlight reflecting off the snowflakes I
couldn't see more than about 30 ft up. I was tired having been up since early
AM so I went in and operated until about 2 AM with the dipole. In the morning I
went out and the problem was obvious. A tree limb had broken and pulled down the
sloping portion of the antenna and loosened the rope a bit. The antenna was
fully against one of the elements of a tribander I have at 65 ft. So I removed
the limb, retied the rope in a better fashion and got the antenna off the
tribander. It worked fine after that.

Propagation wasn't too good Friday. I could hear stations working Eu, but I
never heard a single Eu all night. Saturday it was better, worked a few Eu, but
all in the Iberian peninsula area just as the terminator was crossing there.
Never heard any northern, central or eastern Eu. Worked the Caribbean, SA and
HK0NA. Actually worked HK0NA on 6 bands and VP6T on a couple between runs on
160 and during the day. I worked all states including DC and KH6, save KL7. I
heard WL7E at sunrise Sun AM but couldn't work him before someone chased him
off the frequency. The station kept calling him while WL7E was trying to work
weak JAs. WL7E finally gave up and sent "TU N7**" and left the frequency. I
never found him again. Heard several JAs but they were all S&P. I quit when I
got to 100K pts.

Thanks for all the QSos.

73

Jim


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