[CQ-Contest] SS00PH, more on QRP de VY1JA

[J.Allen]

Hello everyone.

This was a very successful SS phone.  I heard, and worked, VY1AC, VY1BM, and
in addition, both VY1CM and VY1AU had told me of plans to be on.  I have
been told that 5 VY1's were heard in the contest.   Hey, isn't this great?
I still heard a lot of "Sweep!, Thanks, J.", so I believe that the ARRL log
checkers are going to find a record number of sweeps in the logs.

Here is the story from my location.

Due to station problems, I got off to a late start... Contest period was
limited here to about 19 hours, but was countered by a serious attempt, and
under the circumstances the mult was well represented at VY1JA.  The class
was "High Power" with the AL-80a running 400 watts to the 400 ft per leg
V-beam at 70 feet for all QSOs on all bands.

Pileups were very manageable for the most part.  On 10 meters, there was
deliberate QRM wherever I went, so I sat on 28.327 most of the time and just
put up with it.  Please forgive me if I cut QSOs short and stopped trying
from time to time, but I often could not hear what was going on.  Whenever
the station on the other end of my circuit would begin to speak, the lid(s)
would key up to cover them.  There were people making rude comments, noises,
and machine generated garbage that had the ring of high powered stations run
by children.  Usually I have found it best to ignore this kind of activity,
but I finally asked the people in the pileup to call the FCC and report the
interference.  Just after that the interference disappeared.  I guess that
some folks need the threat of a club to make them behave.

When I was on 20, the band shifted slowly and I found myself in heavy
competition from a station up one kHz., but that was neither his fault nor
mine, and I stayed where I was so that people could find me on the posted
spot on 20.  It was getting too close to the end of the contest to change
frequencies.  I apologize if I did not hear you.  I tried very hard, but the
QRM everywhere on 20 seemed extreme.

My computer is acting up and crashing intermittently now, WITHOUT the radio
even being on, so it is not RF.  As Murphy would like, it crashed late in
the contest on 20 meters and I had to do a power down reset to get it fixed,
while some of your anxious ops stood by.  I do not know how TR works
relative to this kind of thing, but I do not think I lost even one QSO.  I
am hoping to get another motherboard and power supply in the computer over
the winter, but at least by 2001 fall.  I do NOT want a pileup to have to
wait on a crash again.  Thanks to the many patient souls that waited for me
to get my machine back up.

An Aurora came up during the day on Saturday with an excellent visual
display on
Saturday evening.  I had some one-way trouble on 20, more on 40, while 80
/160 were
essentially non-productive here.  To top it off I had a bad flu to contend
with so
I worked only about 300-400 Q's all day Saturday.

Sunday morning was a new day... Wow, did things turn around for me.  I
gradually felt better, the bands improved and I worked about 800 more Q's.
I ended up with about 300 less Q's than my best for SS, but I am sure the
1100 who made the log are happy I was there.

I worked two other VY1's for my first ever DOUBLE sweep!

The problems I had are common to us all and part of the game.  Here's hoping
that you enjoyed this SS at least as much as I did.

-----------------------QRP AGAIN--------------------------

There is a new wrinkle in the QRP discussion.

It has been brought to my attention that if I stand by for QRP and a non-QRP
station calls me and gets in my log by giving me the precedence "Q"
deliberately, when his entry is different, he gets QSO credit and I do not,
because it looks like I copied his precedence wrong.

I get penalized for HIS rude pileup behavior!  Somehow there has to be a way
to let me stand by for QRP, without hurting anyone nor discouraging me

How do we solve this one???

J., VY1JA



--
CQ-Contest on WWW:        http://lists.contesting.com/_cq-contest/
Administrative requests:  cq-contest-REQUEST at contesting.com