[3830] CQ WW RTTY NR4M M/M HP

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CQ Worldwide DX Contest, RTTY

Call: NR4M
Operator(s): NR4C K4MI AI4WU K7SV W6WLG KM4NBM KA4RRU N4DXS NR4M N7TY N3AIU KK4RTF K2KW KE2KW N3ZV K4GM K4GMH KS4Q KM4CDQ
Station: NR4M

Class: M/M HP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 48

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  State/Prov  DX   Zones
------------------------------------
   80:  652       51      57    15
   40: 1218       51     101    30
   20: 1398       55     106    34
   15:  844       33     100    31
   10:   89       10      18    12
------------------------------------
Total: 4201      200     382   122  Total Score = 6,836,544

Club: 

Comments:

Not a totally smooth weekend...

Had a HUGH crew, but some were in/out and we had SIX 'newbies'.  Some of them
had not done any RTTY before, so there was a bit of slowing down and explaining
things and a bit of hand holding.  This is not a bad thing necessarily, but with
6 beginners in major contest, some allowances were made.  I would not have any
issue having each one of them back again.

About 0200 Z on Sunday morning (10 PM local), the SWR on the 80 meter delta
loop array went sky high.  A cursory inspection with a flashlight didn't show
anything I could fix in the dark, in the middle of the field.  This is our
'bread and butter' antenna for EU.  This is 4 elements suspended from a 300
foot long catenary at 190 feet, fixed on EU.
 
Our other really good 80 meter antenna was not really usable, as the 7 foot
long tuning stubs at the top of 2 of the 4 four square elements had fallen off.
 Apparently, over the years, the fasteners had vibrated out from wind, etc.  The
fellow with the bucket truck who was going to help with the repair, suddenly got
ill and is under a doctors care. <sigh>  Using it at 1500 watts would have
quickly boiled the oil out of the dump load.
The 80 meter inverted VEE at 72 feet, is my stateside antenna and was not real
useful for the DX.  (I guess it works for US as a fellow in PA asked what we
were using for power and antenna, as we were 60 over at his QTH.)
So, our 80 meter numbers are severely lacking as we missed about 9 hours with
effective antennas.

Sadly, Bruce, N7TY, worked his last contest at NR4M, as he's moving to AZ for
work.  We wish him the best of luck with the AZ Outlaws.

Sunday, 15 was way late opening from here, but it did hang in there most of the
day.  Two of the three antenna on the 15 tower would not rotate and the one that
did was the lowest one.

10 was a struggle, to say the least.

And, we never did get the p/p rotating on the top 40, so we were limited in
where we could point the top antenna in the stack.  Luckily, it was on EU.

We all had fun, played nicely and shared the 'toys'.

Thanks for all the Q's and I hope we didn't inconvenience too many of you with
'rookie mistakes'.

73 de Steve, NR4M and the whole 'goat farm' gang.


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