[3830] CQ160 CW KT8K Single Op QRP

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                    CQ 160-Meter Contest, CW

Call: KT8K
Operator(s): KT8K
Station: KT8K

Class: Single Op QRP
QTH: EN82ch
Operating Time (hrs): 6:04

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 151  State/Prov = 32  Countries = 0  Total Score = 11,296

Club: Mad River Radio Club

Comments:

Well - my first slightly-more-than-half-hearted swing at a 160m contest and it
was fun.  I didn't have a lot of time for it and only got 1 QSO in the first
night, but had some time for the second night and am happy with the result.  It
is amazing I could be heard so well - thanks to all who patiently asked for
repeats until we got the QSO in the logs.  

Amazingly, I was being easily heard around sunset Saturday afternoon and had a
great hour of 55 - mighty pleasing when you only run 5 Watts.  I also had an
actual run of 22 Q's at a rate of 55/hour.  I tried to get another going later
but just wasn't being heard well enough to get anything going.   I did hear a
Brazilian station and a number of very-faint Europeans, but couldn't be heard
by any of them - not surprising given my antenna situation.

I ran my 500' up-and-down zig-zag horizontal loop (highest point 60+ feet and
lowest point about 12 feet) for all except one QSO when, mysteriously, the
station I was calling was coming in better on the 20/40/80m inverted vee than
on the loop.  Must have been an unfavorable direction-null for the loop.

The old Orion is quite comfortable putting out only 5 Watts ... now if I just
got around to updating the internal firmware maybe it wouldn't decide to stop
transmitting without telling me a couple of times over a weekend (but maybe
it's sticky relays?) or bollix up the audio filtering so that it generates huge
blasts of crackly noise on strong signals.  Sometimes it just needs a cold
reboot and everything is fine again.  Still, I love this rig and keep it in
diversity receiving mode nearly all the time.  I feed the big loop via an LDG
autotuner, but my favorite Z-11 model stopped lighting the LED's mid-contest
(on 160m only - I was doing a little in the REF contest during the day) and,
worried that something is wrong, I switched to my backup, a more primitive
Z-100 model, which carried me through the rest of the time.
Thanks again, everybody, and I hope to see you in my log in the next big
contest!  73 de kt8k - Tim


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