[3830] TBDC VE9AA Single Op HP

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Stew Perry Topband Challenge

Call: VE9AA
Operator(s): VE9AA
Station: VE9AA

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: FN66
Operating Time (hrs): 8:17

Summary:
Total:  QSOs = 477  Total Score = 2,829

Club: Maritime Contest Club

Comments:

Closest to 3333 pts ?(after adjudication)
Most UK worked?
Most grids worked?

Rig and computer were on all day and worked perfectly, however when I sat down
at sunset, something instantly happened and my SO2R controller was acting
bizaare and I had no audio or rig control. No keying either. WTHECK???!

I doubt I qualify for anything this year.  Feeling ill, I lost motivation just
around 3am local and the sun had not even risen in western DL yet.  EU stations
were still coming through, but I felt quite poor, so I pulled the pin, tossed in
the towel, raised the white flag and said "enough is enough".

Prior to being overcome with nausea however, the contest was enjoyable.  Brief
periods where I could only hear the S9 guys due to some snow static.

Times when there was nothing across the pond, so I would aim to the SW and then
some loud EU would call and I would beam back to EU, work 1 or 2, then nothing. 
At that point, only w1,2 could hear me, so I would aim back Stateside.

This went on for hours and in the end, I put the 2-el array into more-or-less
Omni mode and used it that way.  If I would hear some station very very weakly,
then I could search NE, SW or NW/SE(Omni) to see if I could squeeze that last dB
out of it and try to hear them.

There was about an hour where I was working almost exclusively EU and W6/7
which was really kinda cool.  A lot of fun, that.

I apologize to some of the guys, no doubt QRP or LP fellas, who called but I
could not pull them through even when rotating through the 3 directions I have
here. I have an electric (horse) fence mere meters from my antennas and tonight
the pulses were 20/9.....I can run the NB and push them down to S3-5, but the
band goes to heck, and there are phantom signals everywhere when I do that.  So
I mostly ran with the NB "OFF" and tried to make do with the cr at p I
endure from next door.

It was fun to hear so many west coast & EU, but because I gave up early I
did miss hearing K7RAT and W7EW and some of the UK and Scandanavia guys. There
was no sign of KH6LC, although it was dark in the Pacific when I threw the big
switch... Another 5-5.5 hours would've produced perhaps 100-150 more Q's if I
had slogged it out.

Next time !

I am sure with condx the way they were, someone is taking home the
YR TREES ANTS (3333 pts) plaque this yearI invented.

Mike VE9AA
IC-7410, 2-el array of inverted L's, NE, SW or NW/SE, N3ZN paddle, N1MM+


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