[3830] NAQP CW KC7V(@K8IA) Single Op LP

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North American QSO Party, CW - August

Call: KC7V
Operator(s): KC7V
Station: K8IA

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: AZ
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Remote Operation

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:   26     8
   80:   90    27
   40:  308    49
   20:  318    54
   15:  118    30
   10:   37    12
-------------------
Total:  897   180  Total Score = 161,460

Club: Arizona Outlaws Contest Club

Team: AOCC - Assassins

Comments:

I was not planning on doing this contest.  Bob, K8IA, had some roof damage from
a recent storm and his 3el SteppIR is out of commission at the moment from a
broken control cable so he had other things to do.  He coaxed me into doing
NAQP.  I planned maybe 6-8 hours but ended up doing the full 10.  We were
fortunate not to have any storms to deal with, but the summer QRN was still
brutal.

I used the K3, the fixed Bencher Skyhawk at 45 feet (fixed due east at 90 deg)
the 3el M2 40 at 70ft, an 80m inv. vee and the shunt fed tower for 160. Remote
was through teamviewer and skype.  All keyboard as we've not figured out how to
get the paddles working yet through winkey remote.  I am a pretty good typist
but am so used to using the paddles, especially for fills, that the keyboard
only mode slows me down at times when I hit wrong keys or have to correct
something.  At least I use a simple autohotkey script to bring up the cw window
(cntl+K combo) to send when necessary.  Plus, I have a gaming keyboard which is
not ideal for contests.  I need to swap it out for a simpler keyboard when I do
this again remotely.

Skype was a problem for the first 2-1/2 hours and the last 90 minutes on
80/160.  At the beginning of the contest I could only hear my sidetone about
30% of the time, which is not a big deal, however the audio was slow to
comeback after many transmissions causing me to miss 1 or 2 characters of
stations calling.  Lots of repeats.  I am sure I bungled some names too, like
Tim/Jim.

Skype seemed to settle down around 2130z and was pretty stable on HF.  When I
finally went to 80/160 the last 90 minutes I was having trouble picking up
weaker stations through Skype and the QRN.  Sorry to those I just could not
either hear or decipher.  There seemed to be a fair amount of QSB at times
too.

This contest was a grind for me.  Kept telling myself I should do something
else than deal with summer noise and static but I stuck with it anyway.  With
the start time at 18z I was able to get the chores and a few other things done
early to free up the time.  Activity seemed good and it was great to have a
strong 10m opening at the start and 15m produced well too.

Appreciate all the qsos. 

73
Mike
KC7V


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