[3830] SS SSB VE4VT Single Op HP

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                    ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, SSB

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

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 23:30
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:    0
   80:   45
   40:  323
   20:  369
   15:  606
   10:  143
------------
Total: 1486  Sections = 83  Total Score = 246,676

Club: 

Comments:

Not very happy with the outcome of this one. I had great hopes (Don't we all)
going in that with great conditions that this would be a stellar year. Well
with a major error in strategy and a big smack of Murphy, that didn't happen.

Out of the gate things were great. 2.5 hours of 130-150 Q's per hour on 15m and
I just knew I had t drop to 20m to get a spot before the bottom fell out of 15m.
Hit 20m and continued the rat for another 45 minutes or so and then I started
getting nervous. Yes the rate was good but judging by the activity on the
second radio, 40m was in good shape and it was starting to get full. Since the
sun had set 30 minutes earlier and knowing that 40m would be the evening money
band I made the decision to establish a run frequency before the hordes
descended on the band.

Well with a clear frequency high in the band and not on any potential Shortwave
frequencies I thought I was set. Called and called andcalled and for the next
hour had 12 Q's. Luckily used the second radio on 20m to S&P but the damage
was done. I kept thinking they will come, they will come and foolishly stayed
with the frequency. 20m wasn't closing and the rates would have been much
higher there. Eventually stations wandered down to 40m and the band segment I
was in got very crowded. Take all the contesters and now add in the local rag
chewers and local "nets" and my once good run frequency became
unuseable. Yes people started calling but the QRM was horrible and the rate
stayed low as each Q was a series of repeats. Frustration and anger started to
settle in.

Finally about 0600 things settled down and I established a respectful rate when
Murphy took his first swipe at me. All of a sudden ! realized that the DVK in
N1MM wast not working and I was getting errors that the radios were not
connected. I started CQ'ing manually but then I could not log any calls and had
to revert to paper for about a dozen calls  until I had enough and rebooted the
program and when that didn't work, rebooted the computer. It took 30 minutes to
get things working again and by then it was 06:30, my frequency was occupied and
I figured quit early and start again earlier than planned. 

After 5 hours of fitful time in bed, Grabbed a quick snack and got back on
around 12:30z. Things were slow on 40 and 80 but I knew the high bands would
open soon. About 1 hour into a good run on 20m, Murphy took his second swipe.
N1MM stopped responding again and this time it would not reboot. In fact,
nothing on the PC would load and I discovered my HDD had just crashed.
Fortunately for me I had been running from a network location so my log was
safe but I had to make a decision. Pull the plug for good as this was going to
set me back or strap something together and carry on. So I pulled out the old
PC and fortunately it had all the needed configurations, swapped a bunch of
cables and recorded new DVK messages and it was back to the slug fest.

Made some ground up but just couldn't make up for the horrible Saturday
evening. I averaged only 30 Q/hr for nearly 5 hours on Saturday night. Sunday
was better with rates between 70-120 except for the last hour when Murphy
struck for the 3rd time. While sweeping across 80m the VSWR suddenly jumped way
up and the shack filled with RF. It took a while but I found that a Heliax
jumper between the amp and antenna switch had suddenly developed an
intermittent shield. That was the final straw for me and spent the last 10
minutes chatting with VE4GV who did a great job.

Made the sweep Sunday morning. Need VT, NL and PR when I started Sunday
morning. Got the VT mult almost right away then VO1KVT called me which was a
surprise because I had heard him earlier and he was running a massive pileup.
Needing only PR, I figured they would show up on 10m and sure enough while
tuning the second radio, there was a small pileup and of course it was PR. A
short time later and the sweep was in the log. 

Well more lessons learned and a "new" strategy for next year will
have to be found/

Thanks for all the Q;s and I hope no one missed VE4 this year.

Ed


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