CONTEST related post!

[K8DO at aol.com]

How DARE you interrupt this reflector with a topic that's actually about
contesting techniques!

Denny   ...  k8do at aol.com

As an aside, you wrote...
<  Given this point in the cycle, it would not hurt your score much to sleep
3 hours the first night and even as much as 4.5 hours the second.  It may
cost you a place or two in the standings, but will hurt a LOT less!
>
a comment on that:
I think it was Sat nite of cq ww 95... just after midnite and 40 was short,
nasty and brutish, so I bopped to 80 es then 160 looking for a "few good
men", as they put it in the recruiting ads...  popped back to 40 after about
45 minutes... silenzio, no static,  no nuttin', just a smooth hiss from the
headphones....  scratched my head, checked the rig, checked the coax
switches,  dropped the amp off line, hit transmit and the swr was ok....
crawled behind the operating desk and traced the cables and wiggled
this-n-that, still no joy... I actually got the search light and went out to
see if a ufo had taken the antennas, but everything was ok.... finally it
dawned on me - the MUF had dropped _below_ 7.0 mc. in the middle of the night
in the winter, no less!!!   ... I got the message, and went home to bed....

I'm not much of a contestor (my scores attest to that) but I have been around
a while.. (I was first licensed during cycle 19) and I have never seen that
before... talk about a sunspot minimum.... jeez Louise....