[3830] NAQP SSB N4KG Single Op LP

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                    North American QSO Party, SSB - January

Call: N4KG
Operator(s): N4KG
Station: N4KG

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: ALA
Operating Time (hrs): 10

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   43    28
   80:  109    35
   40:   96    39
   20:  193    47
   15:   66    21
   10:   46    10
-------------------
Total:  553   172  Total Score = 95,116

Club: Alabama Contest Group

Team: 

Comments:

OUCH !  This is only the third Phone NAQP I've entered and it was both
disappointing and embarassing.  

I had planned to do another High Power with Packet effort to pick up some of
the many needed states on Phone via LoTW but 10 and 15M showed NO Sign of
Backscatter or Short Skip so I just worked everyone Barefoot and never turned
on Packet.  Guess I should have signed up for one of the Local Teams even
though my score would come in way down list.  It seemed that I was always -out
of sync- between 20 and 40 Meters.  I only caught the end of the 20M short skip
opening and could never really get any rate going on 40M.  My 80M sloping dipole
only has about 50 KHz bandwidth under an SWR of 2.0:1 so I used my much broader
Corner-Fed Delta Loop (with the bottom wire only 3 ft above ground).  It fits
the classic vertical antenna profile perfectly, i.e., it radiates equally
poorly in all directions.  YES, it fills in the Null from my Sloper but it's no
pile-up buster, especially with Low Power.

My Best Rate probably came from that short skip opening on 20M using my D3
Dipole fixed on W1 !  

My Elevated GP also suffers from a narrow SWR Bandwidth using a Tuner for SSB
and didn't produce much of a rate on 75M even though it worked the most distant
stations with ease.

Bottom Line:  As the KL7 guys noted, this contest is DIFFICULT with Low Power
and either modest antennas or difficult propagation paths / distance.

I expect I'll be using High Power in future NAQP events so that I can ENJOY the
contest.  From North Alabama, it's clear that no matter how good our antennas
are, we are not going to be competitive in this contest when we are skipping
over the high population areas on the high bands unless there is a Short Skip
E-Layer opening.  As many others have observed, it is difficult to impossible
to work much Backscatter on the High Bands with Low Power.

I find it incomprehensible how whoever wrote the rules for this contest thought
that counting multipliers on All Bands but requiring Low Power was a good idea. 
I don't get it!

(FWIW, I used High Power with my modest antennas on CW and it was a FUN event.

Low Power with compromised antennas on SSB SUCKED)

Tom N4KG


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