[CQ-Contest] Important Stuff first, then ww cw from k4nnn

[Jim White, K4OJ]

...its October and CQ WW CW is over a month away, plenty of time to bring
the station back to life for the Fall contest season......NOT

Normally this is true, but with a chaotic year this just was not the case.
My main man and station engineer W1CW had a heart attack and triple
bypass...and I have a new set of restrictions to live by.

Due to health issues, I do not have ability to keep the station up to speed.
What I am able to do however is thank my friends who were able to bring the
station almost back to life in time for the CQWWCW.  A lot of things were
broken or needed doing and many of them got done thanks to my friends in the
Florida Contest Group.

I would in particular like to thank WC4E, K1TO, N4GI, K5KG, K1FB, T93M and
N4KM.  I can no longer climb and of course most of the work to be done was
in the air...used to be that was no big deal, unfortunately now it is.  Of
course my parents W1CW and W1YL make excellent hosts and it is rumored they
did not beat up on the off time operators at 8 ball too badly!

Several weekends ago the prep work was done to install a new 15 meter beam,
an existing 20 meter beam had to be moved to the top of the mast to make a
place for the 15, and it was a time consuming job taking several days...on
the second day weather cut short the attempt to install the new yagi, it
even made its way to the top of the tram when the rains came....

Last weekend it finally was installed and yes, it played well for us this
weekend.

With way too many things to do in time for the contest, we were able to get
a signal on the air on all six bands.  A new 80 meter vertical antenna was
installed just before the start of the contest which did not allow us time
to tune it - even with a 4:1 SWR we did work 61 countries and 19 zones on
80!  Unfortunately the noise pickup is even worse it seemed than the old
dipole was so it looks like I will have to take the plunge and add some
rx-ing antennas!

The tall tower has 4L10 and 2L 40 beams on it and unfortunately the rotor on
it is broken...it was limping just before SS and I managed to turn it so
that the beams were on W8/W9...this weekend however it did absolutely
nothing and we were stuck with the 40 meter beam NOT on Europe...still we
managed 106 countries and 30 zones there...

The high 4L 10 I felt was not a big loss being condx are so good the lower
antennas are favored, but just as the contest started, the low tower with 4L
10 on it was rotated and then stopped turning - facing South....so we had
one normally rotatable beam fixed North one beam fixed South.  Luckily my 6L
10 fixed on Europe produced admirably - we had 127 countries and 35 zones
there.

The 4/4/4 on 20 did better than usual it seemed - despite the middle beam
suddenly developing a high SWR...I think for the first time since we have
done multi-ops from the W1CW station we got WAZ on 20...with 134 countries
and 1090 QSOs...20 seemed a bottomless pit, you gotta love it.

I smoked a linear during SS CW a few weeks ago and unfortunately my olde
Alpha 374 backup is showing its finals age - we only had about 500 watts out
on 10, but we were able to run well there!

I have yet to merge the logs which are a little screwy but the total is
about 6.5M very close to our local competition N4TO...all the computers with
CT on them are back at the station and I am sitting here with no software to
merge the disks in front of me :-)....ooops.

Our crew consisted of regular Kevin, N4KM and myself and two new
players...both of whom I hope will come back!  We had Red, K0LUZ joining
us - I had operated with him years ago after I moved to Florida and our
other new to the team member was Danny, T93M.  T93M is a very good operator,
and a great guy - we are lucky to have him here with us in Florida...I hope
he can come by for many multi-ops in the future when he isn't down in the
Caribbean!

Yeah lots of stuff was busted and we did not do quite as well as we would
have but damnit I had a great time. W1YL made sure we were well fed, the
ionosphere kept the ops busy and there were not a lot of rig problems.

The new side by side operating position with the WX0B six pack was perfect
for flexibility....we had a third position with a tribander on it just in
case but it boiled down to the 2 position station being more than adequate
for M-S.

Much of the equipment was borrowed, thanks to all the ops who brought gear
and also thanks to WW1N for the last minute loan of a linear to cover 160
meters.

Again I ask, what is more fun than CW contesting?  You have to love it...

Will post the merged totals to 3830 reflector in a day or two when I get CT
on this machine.

73,

Jim, K4OJ



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