[3830] CQWW CW N5FO SOAB Classic LP

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                    CQ Worldwide DX Contest, CW

Call: N5FO
Operator(s): N5FO
Station: N5FO

Class: SOAB Classic LP
QTH: Tyrone, NM
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
------------------------------
  160:    2     2        2
   80:   25    11       13
   40:  269    19       57
   20:  124    23       56
   15:  634    28       79
   10:   24    14       17
------------------------------
Total: 1078    97      224  Total Score = 970,062

Club: Arizona Outlaws Contest Club

Comments:

OK, so after looking for about a year I finally buy this "cherry"
AL-800H amp that has new Eimac tubes AND will fit comfortably in my limited
space for a 2nd amp. But when it arrived a few weeks ago, one look confirmed
that UPS had made sure this "heavy thing" was destroyed upon
delivery! Yep, even though double boxed by the shipper, the package had been
dropped (from the top of UPS 20 story headquarters) no less than 57 times! The
amp and new tubes were pretty-much destroyed - so ends my big plan for having
an SO2R amp for this contest season.  Oh, and yes after about a zillion
pictures, several write-ups, two days effort attempting to repair and many
emails & letters from both myself & the shipper, I got my money back.
Too late to look for another amp.

So, the CQWW dilemma - do I operate all out HP SO2R with a 100W second radio,
do another single band like last year (40M - 2nd US) or try something LP. Since
I missed out on the fun of the upper bands last year, I opt'd for LP AB at the
last minute on Friday morning.  Since I don't have the stamina of a "real
contester" I took the 24 hour path to fun rather than the 48 hours of
sleep loss & endurance!  Thanks to my great mentor Steve (N2IC) I figured
out Friday morning how to arrange the single radio, two VFO's, SO2V in N1MM+
and the antenna ports to best advantage. What a wild mess of cables!

So, the game plan was to work the opening Friday eve for a few hours (targeting
anything & everything but esp the JAs), get some sleep, up at 1100Z for the
early morning JA run on 40 while using the 2nd VFO to test 15 (oh, yes and
going thru the agony of listening to the east coast boys working EU's left
& right before WE can get thru). So the EU opening Sat morning was much
better than expected, yahoo!, what fun even with only 100W! 
 
A mid-afternoon break to walk away from the radio, get a little fresh air &
sunshine & back for the 15M JA run at 2200, which was PDG for 100W running!

OK, so this all worked pretty well, so I decide to quit early Sat eve, and save
enough hours for Sun to do the early morning 15M EUs again, and save 2 hours for
the last hoorah Sun afternoon on another JA run. WRONG< Hate to say it but
neither happened, so Sunday was a real struggle with just the 100W trying to
S&P and break major pileups for new mults. The last two hours I had all but
given up (looking mostly @ 15 & 20) when the idea popped to try 40. Yes, 40
was rocking along pretty well and even allowed for a small amount of successful
running, and picking up a few good mults. In retrospect, a later finish Friday
night, and extra time Saturday afternoon would have been a better choice.

Lessons learned (so, I know I'm still a newbie at this contest stuff, but will
I ever get past learning all these lessons each time?):
Don't wait 'til Friday morning to finally decide on a category.
Don't wait 'til a couple hours before the contest to finalize a strategy.
Don't try to physically switch too many antennas during the contest, and forget
which ones are on which Ant port. (Yes, they WERE all color coded & marked
at the start, but when you move them around, oh well!)
Don't hit the wrong keyboard key(s) in N1MM+ forcing a restart of the software
to figure where you are.

DO put up a second tribander, it really helped being able to "look in two
directions" without touching the rotor controls.
Do enjoy the fact that running "barefoot" is nice - not to have to
worry about tuning the linear(s).

And finally, DO REALIZE THAT DOING CQWW WITH 100W is a SLOW PROCESS, which
requires MUCH PATIENCE.  Hats off to my buddy Marv (N5AW) and all of you out
there who've been LP for many years!

Thanks to all for the Q's and Mults, and your patience digging out a weak LP
signal thru the pileups. Even though I didn't meet my stretch goal for score
(1M), I did beat it for Q's (>1000), increased my LP skills, and had lots of
fun!
73s,
Sam


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