[3830] CQ160 CW N4XD Single Op HP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW

Call: N4XD
Operator(s): N4XD
Station: N4XD

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Raleigh, NC
Operating Time (hrs): 

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 1067  State/Prov = 57  Countries = 44  Total Score = 420,665

Club: 

Comments:

Equipment:
K3, Alpha 91b, shunt fed tower, multiple beverages.

My best single op score so far. Working on the beverages earlier really paid
off!
 
The start Friday night was slow. Or at least I thought so. That said still had
a respectable 1st hour. Took a break at 10 and when I came back found the band
had opened nicely to Europe. I had worked the 1st EU at 0056 (ON4IA) but after
11PM local found a steady flow of European stations. 

As I was operating on Friday night/ Saturday morning around 0600Z suddenly the
swr jumped VERY high. Took a look outside and....the matching network for the
shunt fed tower was..... ON FIRE!! A quick run back to the house to bring out
some water and the flames were out....and so was the motor drive for the vacuum
variable in the gamma match. Put a tuner in the shack and continued on. Not
ideal but enough to get me going again.

Something gave up the ghost later and had to shut it down before dawn. Saturday
rebuilt the matching network using an old wind shield motor from my spare parts
car for the race car. Of course it had sleeted overnight so had to dig it out
of  the car shell. Got it adapted to the vacuum variable (of course the shaft
of the motor was just a bit more then 1/4" so had to carefully drill out a
coupler to fit. NOT what I wanted to be doing after operating all night!). 

Got it all done and re-installed at the tower base before 10 AM local so could
now grab some sleep. The good news is it continued to work perfectly for the
remainder of the contest which was great as it allowed me to work up and down
the band tuning the cap remotely to keep the swr low.

Both nights had great openings to Europe. Some random notes:

N7GP in quite early from AZ with a FB signal (0039Z)
PC5M quite loud
CS2F VERY loud. So loud I was startled and missed the call the first time! 
F8GB also quite loud

Never heard any JA or KL7 (I've read others saying the same thing). Never found
the ZL or VK that other's have reported working so sorry to miss them. 

As a general note, a very fun contest with action throughout making it pretty
easy to stay awake. Not always the case:)


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