[3830] RAC Winter VE4VT SO SSB HP

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                    RAC Winter Contest

Call: VE4VT
Operator(s): VE4VT
Station: VE4VT

Class: SO SSB HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 18.5
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  CW Qs  Ph Qs  CW Mults  Ph Mults
----------------------------------------
  160:   0       10      0         4
   80:   0      161      0         9
   40:   0      536      0        11
   20:   0      448      0        12
   15:   0      432      0        11
   10:   0       11      0         6
    6:   0        3      0         1
    2:   0        1      0         1
----------------------------------------
Total:   0     1602      0        55  Total Score = 442,090

Club: CONTEST CLUB OF MANITOBA

Comments:

A contest of fun and surprises. It was wonderful to be able to pass on Holiday
greetings to so many familiar calls.

A few of the surprises were good. Like turning the beam north to work a local
station on ground wave only to have that QSO be followed by a station from the
NT and another from the YT. Both new mults. Amazing what happens when you point
North.

Pointing east and being surprised by a couple VK stations via long path on
15m.

Being called by an LZ station on 40m while working strong midwest stations.

Now for the not so nice surprises. Boy the folks out east go to bed early on
Friday night. Activity took a serious nose dive after about 0400z. I know quite
a few avid contesters migrated to 160m CW to warm up for the Stew Perry test but
40 and 80m were quite played out.

Noise on 80m still plagues me and it reaches 20 over 9 at times and it is
fatiguing to try and pull out calls buried in the noise.

As VE4RAC wrote, we went through a minor blizzard on Saturday where temps
dropped from -1C Friday to -33C Saturday evening. Brought in by strong winds
and snow it was horrible outside and a good excuse for playing radio all day.
However the snow static was evident and I believe the winds and sudden
temperature change contributed to the final surpise.

During Saturday morning I noticed that the VSWR was jumping around on the HF
triband beam. I thought it may have just been the wind. Around noon it finally
stayed high and I suspect the rotator loop cable or the balun went south. That
meant that I had to rely on the ground mounted vertical in the backyard for
Saturday afternoon. The higher noise and loss of gain was missed. The vertical
was also the antenna I used for the second radio so that meant no SO2R for the
rest of the day.

I went to 40m ealier than planned around 2200z and was surpised how good the
band was. Strong signals from everywhere and enjoyed 120 Q per hr the last 2
hours.

Still a lot of fun.

HNY to all and see you in the RTTY RU next week!

Ed
VE4VT/VE4EAR

N1MM
IC7700/IC746Pro
Optibeam OB11-5 @51'
Force 12 Delta 240 @60'
Slopers for 80/160m


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