AA4NC 160m Contest jet lagged

[AA4NC at aol.com]

ARRL 160m Contest

AA4NC
Single Op / High (yet legal)power / North Carolina / 26 hours
1151 Qs x 102 mults = 248,880

Aparatura:
Yaesu FT990 / AL1200 / Inverted vee / shunt fed receive tower

Excuses 'R us:
It's daylight in the swamp - Must have been the 160m contest this weekend.
Boy am I sleepy! 
Well I hope you're satisfied -just when I think I can make top ten and STILL
get some sleep, you guys creep up and operate all day on Saturday. We need to
nip it - nip it in the bud I say !!

I had it all planned - I'd take Friday off and get the shunt fed tower
finished, and rest up before the 5 PM contest start. Boss didn't buy the
story about my grandmother dying for the third time in 3 weeks, so no rest at
all on Friday. I fly home 30 minutes before the start to hook up the feedline
and stretch the elevated radials on the shunt feed. I'm sure this is gonna be
the killer antenna that's gonna make me sound like the VOA. Good news and bad
news- the antenna really sucked on transmit, but for some unknown reason,
acted as a great receive antenna to the midwest. I could hear W9 and W0
stations Q5 that were almost inaudible on the inverted vee. W6 and W7 were a
toss-up. Wierdest thing I've ever witnessed...

Band seemed to be in fair-to-good condition. Weather was fair but warm with a
small amount of QRN. Conditions seemed a bit wierd in that the west was not
as loud as usual here in my opinion. The 6's stayed in for a long time, but
they all seemed weaker than in years before. Maybe I messed up my old
inverted vee by changing out the ratty coax this year. Maybe that corroded
connector was the secret "160 magic" everyone has been talking about... 

Went to sleep after being up 27 hours on Saturday at 1300Z. That's when you
guys just couldn't leave well enough alone and go to sleep with us zombies!
When I got back on again at 2100, I was distressed to find AB4RU had stolen
my frequency that I left that morning (Have you no shame Lee?). I then found
a VERY clear frequency at 1.833 and fired up the CQ machine. Funny- I kept
getting called by UL1D, but he would never give me a report. I got run off
the frequency later by ON4UN. Those Europeans sure get all the good
frequencies don't they? Just as I'm about to give up on Sunday morning, KV4FZ
gives me a call for that much needed VI mult. I looked upon this is a sign
from on high. 
Called 4,769 more CQs with no answer - then quit.  

Looks like I'm second in NC (good job Don) and hanging from the bottom rung
of the Top Ten - maybe...(with condx. like they were to EU, I'm sure K1ZM
will take the top five spots at least!).  It was fun as usual. Let's do it
again next year.

3333333,

Will 

(I'm gonna go now and try to cipher up a way to work those extra 400 guys who
worked AB4RU and didn't have the manners to call me when my rate was a
steaming 7/hour)

>From Robert B. Bonner" <0002063665 at mcimail.com  Tue Dec  5 01:38:00 1995
From: Robert B. Bonner" <0002063665 at mcimail.com (Robert B. Bonner)
Date: Mon, 4 Dec 95 20:38 EST
Subject: Kerboom E-Mail explodes
Message-ID: <42951205013824/0002063665PL4EM at MCIMAIL.COM>

Just thought you guys would enjoy a story that didn't effect you. One of
my buddies from his company sent a message to one of the guys regarding
a correction to a contest score.

It turns out the E-mail server was low on available disk space and went
totally bizerk. He found out this morning when the guy he was making the
correction for K0KX called in a panic saying stop send me messages. He was
CC'ed to the message Mark said the E-mail system was completely overloaded
at his office a major national electronics wholesaler and nothing would
work. It turns out their system notifies each op of incoming E-Mail and 
locks their terminals until acknowledged. It was beeping every minute.
The whole company was down. This guy was only CC'ed.

The server had sent out a message every minute at the time like 895 times.

I feel sorry for the pour guy that the message was for how would you like
900 flamers to start your day?

Thank the E-Mail god that this was not a message to the reflector or we would
all be screwed!!!

Kerboom!!!  I guess thier is something to be said for using E-Mail at your
office for non business purposes. I hope all of you don't get your TITTIES
in the ringer like these two might.

The poor guys that pay for incoming by the charicter might have put a contract out
out on my buddy  73's have an E-Mail kind of day  Bob K0DD