[3830] NAQP CW NJ8J Single Op LP

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                    North American QSO Party, CW - January

Call: NJ8J
Operator(s): NJ8J
Station: NJ8J

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: GA
Operating Time (hrs): 10

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    5     5
   80:  151    33
   40:  170    42
   20:   60    23
   15:   17     6
   10:           
-------------------
Total:  403   109  Total Score = 43,927

Club: South East Contest Club

Team: SECC#2

Comments:

Icom IC-7300
LDG AT-11MP Automatic Antenna tuner
10M Half-square
110 ft OCF doublet fed with ladder-line
Logger: N1MM+

A new high score for NAQP CW.  Would have been higher, except sometime in the
1900Z hour, I went up to check 10M, and switched over to the 10M half-square.  I
found nothing on 10, but forgot to switch back over to the doublet when I went
back to 15 and 20.  It stayed there until late in the 2300Z hour, when I
realized that I was still on the 10M half-square.  I thought the bands had
gotten worse (signals were mostly down in the mud), and the strange thing was I
would call someone on 20 and a few seconds after I finished, the noise floor
would rise about 10db (quite visible on the IC-7300 spectrum scope) for about
10-15 seconds.  This generally meant that I had just enough time to hear the
other station call me and then the noise would come up just as he sent his
exchange.  I had to reduce power to about 35 watts on 20 to keep this from
happening.  I'm really not sure how running 100W on 20M into the 10M half-square
resulted in this effect.  but the net result was I had about 3 hours of 20M
operating where my rate was effectively halved.  I realized the problem when I
moved down to 40M and the AT-11MP wouldn't match like usual (kinda strange that
the AT-11MP actually matched the half-square on 20).

Operation on 40 was a lot more fun.  0000Z hour was a 60Q hour, all S&P,
which actually beat the 0100Z hour, where I managed a 21Q run.  0000Z through
0400Z all had >52Qs/hour, mostly S&P, on 40 and 80.

This is my first NAQP with the IC-7300 and the first with keying through the
Mortty (think Winkeyer clone) instead of the straight key.  The 250Hz filter
setting came in handy on 80, along with the occasional tweak of the twin PBT to
narrow it down ever further.


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