[3830] ARRL 10 AE0EE SO Mixed LP

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ARRL 10-Meter Contest

Call: AE0EE
Operator(s): AE0EE
Station: AE0EE

Class: SO Mixed LP
QTH: 
Operating Time (hrs): 7

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  36     14
  SSB:   6      2
-------------------
Total:  42     16  Total Score = 2,496

Club: 

Comments:

100 W, dipole up 25'.  Vibroplex for all cw.  I broke down and used a voice
keyer for this one, but it didn't end up being used for any exchanges or
successful CQ calls.

This contest was a bit different from my usual full-time effort.  Two fairly
big things kept me from operating the whole time, which was almost certainly
for the best.

One of the members of the Bloomington Amateur Radio Association, Dan (KE0OR),
has been getting into contesting a little bit recently with a few contacts in
Sweepstakes SSB.  For the better part of two months, I've been encouraging him
and others in the club to get on for the 10 m contest.  The weekend before the
contest Dan and I built a 10 m antenna so that he'd have some metal in the air
come contest weekend.  While I had been planning to be in St. Peter all
weekend, I ended up going to operate with Dan on Friday evening to give
everything a shakeout and do some contest mentoring.  It worked pretty well. 
We made a few contacts in each mode, and went over contesting procedures and
practices.

Saturday I attended the memorial service for Tod Olson, K0TO (SK).  At Dayton
this year, I had a nice conversation with him, and he gave me some pointers on
navigating the early stages of a career.  He also told me about his Grandpa
Grants program, where he would financially support his grandchildren in their
pursuits via a proposal process.  I'll have to keep that one in mind for use
later in my life.

With all of that going on, it was about 5 PM local on Saturday before I got my
shack together and on the air.  Fortunately there was still a little bit of an
opening to the East Coast, and I quickly picked up some multipliers and QSOs
before the only stations I could find were others in MN.

Sunday morning I was up fairly early to try some meteor scatter. 
Unfortunately, the meteors seemed to be giving very brief pings---only a second
or so---which ended up not working very well.  At least I was able to use
meteors to enhance some ground-wave to bag a much-needed WI multiplier.

Propagation was lousy on Sunday.  During the afternoon I had a short window (20
minutes?) during which I was hearing South American stations (two Brazilians,
Uruguay, Venezuela, and Chile).  In some cases, I couldn't hear well enough to
get their entire callsign, and within a minute or two they were generally back
down into the noise.

Toward the end of the day Sunday, I heard Dan (KE0OR), but unfortunately he was
right at my noise level and I was below his.

Thanks to all for getting on the band and giving it a try!


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