[3830] SS CW K0HC(W0BH) School Club HP

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                    ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW - 2021

Call: K0HC
Operator(s): W0BH
Station: K0HC

Class: School Club HP
QTH: KS
Operating Time (hrs): 21.7

Summary:
 Band  QSOs
------------
  160:     
   80:  278
   40:  381
   20:  185
   15:  148
   10:     
------------
Total:  992  Sections = 84  Total Score = 166,656

Club: Hesston College ARC

Comments:

Murphy hit hard this CW Sweepstakes. Two weeks before Sweeps something ran
through the guy wires of the 40/80 vertical, bent it double, and slammed the top
hat into the ground. Fortunately, only one aluminum tube was bent plus some of
the top hat wires, so a quick call to MFJ got parts on order. Parts are becoming
a supply problem, but they had the right tube in stock and it arrived the
morning of Sweepstakes in time to get the antenna vertical once again!

I got started on time and was pleased to find 15m open, so it was a real treat
to find some of the hard-to-get sections right off the top and run 15m to both
coasts. I had a pretty normal (for me) rate going on Saturday and ended the
"day" missing MAR, NL and NT (also pretty normal).

On Sunday, rates were good at first and I settled in for some fun. Somehow, I
kicked the power supply cable by accident and half the boxes went dark as the
connector detached. When I plugged it back in everything seemed to be OK for a
bit, then the audio to my headset went to almost nothing. I flipped lots of
switches and finally determined that the problem was the QSK box to the main
amp. I knew what to replace on that from previous experience, at least I thought
I did, so I took it apart but all appeared normal. Rather than waste more time
troubleshooting, I took the QSK box from the second radio, swapped it in and all
worked again except the amp on the second radio.

OK, is Murphy done? Not quite! When I disconnected the second QSK box, I put the
wires where I though they'd be out of the way. One of them snuck behind the main
12v supply and suddenly there was a fountain of sparks! That shut everything
down but it all came back up and there were no additional problems the rest of
the time. I've gone a lot of contests with no problems, so I guess this was my
time to catch up.

I can normally work NL and MAR first off on Sunday morning, and this year was no
exception. NT was a bit of a challenge, but I found VY1CO just starting to call
CQ on 15m and worked him. No one else seemed to hear him, so I let him know he
gave me the Sweep. My last five were WY, DE (only worked one this year, NL, MAR
and NT with the sweep at 1622Z. My singletons this year were DE, NT, NL, AK and
VI.

School stations worked: W2UB K7UAZ W9JWC K5LSU. It's always great to hear other
schools on the air!

I'm going to try to field a small team of students for SSB Sweeps. We won't have
time to practice, so it will be on-job-training at it's best. I'll include some
of our aviation students who already know the phonetic alphabet. We'll see how
it goes.

The log has been uploaded to LOTW. Thanks for the fun!

73, Bob, w0bh
trustee, k0hc
Hesston College ARC


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