[3830] ARRL 10 WA1T(@K1WHS) M/S HP

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                    ARRL 10-Meter Contest - 2021

Call: WA1T
Operator(s): WA1T K1BX K1WHS
Station: K1WHS

Class: M/S HP
QTH: ME
Operating Time (hrs): 34

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   CW:  698    79
  SSB:  526    53
-------------------
Total: 1224   132  Total Score = 507,408

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:

Al, WA1T,  started out operating on Friday night and he spent the evening
working meteor scatter and extremely weak CW contacts with some isolated Es QSOs
interspersed with the really weak scatter contacts.  K1BX arrived on Saturday
morning to help out.  Our setup consisted of a K3 radio driving my home brew KW
amplifier, a single band design with an Eimac YC156 triode doing all the work.
About 25-30 watts of drive will get you 1500 watts output, and we ran the amp
all weekend and it worked very well. It helped to keep the shack warm too. We
actually had to turn on the fan to remove the warm air. It was rather mild for
Maine at 40 degrees F during the day.   The antenna was a 70 ft tower with 3 x 5
el HB yagis on it, all fully rotatable and fed with 1 5/8" Heliax. There is
also another fixed array aimed at Brazil and Argentina. It consists of two 5
element yagis at 40 and 60 ft with a short run of 7/8" Heliax.  The two SA
yagis are side mounted on my 222 MHz tower.  The three stack has a homebrew
relay box on the tower so we can select different combinations or all at once. 
We usually had the three antennas all pointing in different directions. The two
antenna systems worked fine all weekend. We quit at about 11:30 PM Friday night
with about 183 stations in the log and about 30 multipliers. It was slow going
on Friday night.

We came back up the hill Saturday morning and turned on the generator and warmed
up the gear. We made our first contact at 11:17 and things were slow. We worked
South America starting at13:24 UT, with a YV1 station, followed by KP4 and 9Z4. 
At 15:08 we started working Europe. Our first contact was good buddy DH8BQA.  We
only worked a few DLs and a PA. Not much of an opening. The solar flux was just
too low for our northern location. It was over at 15:52UT! The big European
opening fizzled out in about a half hour! Folks farther South had much better
luck.  We went back to working a few South Americans. That path was pretty good
up to 17:30 when we started getting some stateside Es. That was pretty good up
to about 22:00 UT.  About that time we snagged ZL3IO for a neat contact on CW. 
The Es hung on thru the early evening on Saturday, but by 0300UT it was getting
awfully slow, so we decided to QRT at 0300 when contacts were few and far
between. Our last QSOs were with MN, TX, and FL. The Saturday Es opening really
helped our score. We jumped to 977 Qs when we quit.

Sunday morning dawned clear and very windy. We started the diesel and it was
purring along. EA8 & CT9 was worked at 12:26. We had the beams turned SE and
at 13:02 we logged an SM2 station via the skewed path for, I think, our only
mainland EU contact on Sunday.  One happy note was working some African stations
starting around 13:00 on Sunday morning. ZS6KR, V51YJ, FR4KR, V55Y and FR4PJ
went in the log.  There was some more minor Es starting for us at about17:00 UT.
We worked a few new sections on the west coast. CA, AZ, ID, CO, OR, UT etc. It
had slowed by 19:00 UT.  It was gone by 20:00 and the last few hours were
totally dead here, with only a few contacts being made. By 22:00, Al had had
enough. I was busy on 222 MHz EME and actually worked or heard more stations
than he was working then on 10!  K7KQA was on a DX-pedition to Oregon on 222
MHz, and the line to work him was huge. I had fun listening to all those
stations bouncing back from the Moon.  The door opened to the building, and AL
was there with a look that said "I am DONE!"  We shut things off and
piled into the truck and bounced and slid down the hill for home.  We only made
250 Qs all day on Sunday. It was pretty slow.

All in all, it was a great exercise for the ten meter gear here. We have some
ideas to improve things. Our idea of a mult station has been canned, as it is
impossible to use a 2nd rig when rig #1 is on the same band running 1500 watts.
Without a CW/SSB brute force filter for 28 MHz, the danger of blowing out the
receiver is very real. I measured 17 dB of attenuation between the three stack
and my 6 element mult yagi when both are aimed at each other!  17 dB down from
1500 watts translates to about 25 watts going into the front end of radio #2!! 
Even cross polarization does not provide enough of a buffer.  We need another 40
dB!!  Instead, we will incorporate the extra antennas into a switching scheme
that is available to the main station. You can't have too many antennas!

We ended up with 1224 QSOs in 92 sections and 40 DXCC countries for a total of
507,408 points.  Hopefully, next year,  Northern New England will not be at such
a disadvantage with propagation. Still, we had a blast playing radio all
weekend. In the slow time, Art, K1BX fashioned a wind driven piece of art made
out of toilet paper, and hung it on the exhaust port of the YC-156 amp. It
danced around in the exhaust air all weekend and was the center of attention all
weekend. The shack was looking like an auto dealership!!


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