[CQ-Contest] How not to work the contest!

[David L. Thompson]

Murphy and all his cousins hit my CQ 160 SSB effort this time. Call used
W4BCV SO HP with K4JRB listed as the op.

On Tuesday I hurt my foot for which the Doc said "You won't be able to climb
the tower to put antennas for a few weeks."  Well I said my antennas are
working OK now thank you.  Then the storm blew in and the Uni-Hat lost part
of the top hat again, the receiving antenna blew down, and the MULTEE came
out of the small tree in the back yard.

The Uni-Hat came  down (its on a push up mast) but no time to patch the top
hat section before Saturday.  I did get the receiving antenna back up in a
temporary limb, but I found that the loop must have broken in some place as
it did not work.  Finally on Friday as I had the MULTEE all together the
feed side connector fell apart and all the hardware sprayed across the back
yard and it was dusk so that ended that...so no operation on Friday night.

Saturday saw the MULTEE get fixed but it resonates at 1912 Khz not 1840.  I
test out the old faithful FT980 and its working good.  Come back at lunch at
it does not work on LSB.  Off comes the cover and I realign the BFO VCV
circuit.  Its critical but it works.  Then I start tracing down the problem
with the receiving antenna.  Seems water got into the soldered end of the
shielded loop so I replace the end section and seal it with water seal then
tape.  Now it works but picks up BC images everywhere that were not there
before.  Now its nearly dark so run into the shack and make two passes of
the band for 96 contacts including 5 NA DX mults.  Have to take the 9 year
old JR Op to dinner and when I get back the FT980 has a spurious sound on
LSB.  I again take the cover off and spray GC tune lub in the BFO VCV
adjustment slug...the noise in gone.   I decide to add the 17 meter X beam
to the receiving antenna as it works well on 80.

Off I go for 3 hours of S&P for another 150 Q's.  Then the QRN builds to
20DB on the shielded loop.  The 17 X beam proves a godsend as I can copy
most on that antenna and the QRN drops much faster than the sigs.  I finally
get a run freq and put 104 Q's in the log in the next 64 minutes.  The XYL
comes home so I stop to say a few words to her and come back down.  Go high
in the band and run another 50 in the next 45 minutes but QRN gets too bad
so I go back to S&P.  Sigs from EU are good on the receive antenna and I
work a few and two call me.  Catch TG9NX who I called for 15 min earlier on
the first call (boy the guys were even fighting over TG9's).  A P40 calls me
and then QRN just blocks the receiver.  WY3T asks me were was Alabama and
all I copy are the 10 loudest stations who I have already worked.   Continue
slow S&P (hello HB9, heres F6...N5IA comes thru nicely..XE1RCS is loud on
1830).  Even try one more round of CQ and work three but stop as I hear W7's
calling under the QRN.  Work K1VW at 0723Z and pull the plug.

Phew...502 Q's  52 States/Provinces (only worked VE2, 3, 7..heard VE1ZZ
early but he was on EU) and 15 countries (heard 5 or 6 more).  Ran the amp
for 50% of the Q's but ran the 40 meter beam below 1830 as the MULTEE would
not match even thru the tuners so only 100 watts there...  1127 points for
75.5K  8 hours 14 minutes.

Sorry to the W7's that called me but QRN was just to bad and I live on 1/2
acre so receiving antennas are what I can manage..unfortunately the QRN won
this round.  Did not hear Dj6QT at CT3BX or anyone from EA8. 

Why the 40 meter beam.  I found that the Cushcraft atop the tower at 86'
must load up as a top hat on the coax as a decent vertical sans radials.
Can't run the tower until I strap all the crank up sections together.
Suspect the improvement will be a good radial system.  I don't want to
damage anything so I run 100W when using the beam.  The beam is a killer
and 40 is my best competition band.  The 40 meter beam also is my 17 meter
antenna, too.

Looks like there will be some decent scores despite Sat nite (stateside)
QRN.  Remember I take e-mail logs at cq160 at contesting.com.  Please remember
to thank Bill W4AN for the use of the e-mail addess!  Of course diskettes
with sum/dup sheets or hand logs are accepted, too.

73 Dave K4JRB
CQ WW 160 Contest director



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