Another FD score, SDDXC

[price at cod.nosc.mil]

Here are the almost final numbers for the San Diego DX Club's 2A Field Day
effort.  We used the call K6NA (yup, the Ratt himself was in there
hollerin'
"CQ Field Day" with the best of 'em).  We had a TS-850S and TS-950 for the
main HF stations, a TS-930 (?) for the novice station, all-mode Xcvrs plus
amps on 6, 2, 220, and 432, full OSCAR satellite station, and packet.  We
used 386 or better laptops and a late version of CT at all operating
positions.  The computers were fully integrated with the radios.  We had 3
el on 10, 4 el on 15, 4 el on 20, 2 el on 40, and inv. vee on 80, plus some
very high gain antennas on VHF/UHF bands.  QTH was the top of Point Loma in
San Diego about 1 mile north of the Cabrillo Lighthouse, about 400 feet
above water on three sides.

        Band     CW     SSB

         80     110     110
         40     375     105
         20     618     560
         15     492     319
         10       3     258 (novice)
          6       4      45
          2       1     160
        220              39 (novice)
        packet   65
                ----    ----
               1668    1595*

        satellite Qs are included in the above (we only made about 10)

plus 1100 bonus points (but we didn't get the solar panel to work)

===>> total score of just about 11,000.  That would have been *very* close
to winning for 2A last year.  Hopefully it will be this year, too.

* - let me say that going in, we had planned to make virtually zero SSB Qs,
what with the 2x mult for CW Qs.  Howsomever, we had some extremely high
rate SSB runs, especially on 20 and 15 that justified spending a few hours
there.  I haven't seen the rate sheets yet, but I'll bet we were well over
100 Qs/hour for all of the SSB hours.  I had one run of almost 180 Qs/hour
on 15!

Opportunities we missed:  17 meters, novice CW bands, OSCAR (we suffered a
bit from lack of familiarity with using it).

Confusion we suffered:  trying to use CT to log all the various VHF and UHF
bands, plus novice and packet.  Having "novice" listed as a "band" doesn't
cut it, and would have been even worse if we'd had a novice using the CW
novice bands.  We also got a little befuddled about what novice, coded
techs, and no-code techs could do and not do.  "Life isn't as simple as it
used to be."

Anyway, we had a *great* time, no major hickups.  Ken, KA5Q, did an
outstanding job of organizing the thing, we had over 20 participants,
including several fearless tower climbers, and lots of hardware.  

I realize that most contesters do not consider FD to be a Contest (with a
capital C), however it's what you make it, and we decided to go for it!

73--Jim, K6ZH (Prez of SDDXC--for another 11-1/2 months)