Operators for the
contest were Brian NX9O, Kim WG8S, Bill KI4US, Jerry W5TDY, Brad
KM4QHI, Ron WW8RR, Kos N4SDK, Bob K4VBM, Jim W4KXY and Bob
W4ZST. We met at Roosters as usual on Saturday and six of us
enjoyed our traditional lunch there. We had visitors: Anna
N9KHC, Mike KC4RI, Mike KO4MIK and David KQ4GHK. The visitors
were here for Saturday afternoon and dinner. Several friends who
had planned to come visit ended up having to cancel due to other
obligations and we did miss them.
Bill stayed three nights, Kim two, Kos, Bob and Ron one night. Brad
and Jerry commuted.
Jerry's meals were great as usual. Here is the menu that we all
enjoyed so much.
Saturday: Smoked Beef
Brisket, Smoked Kielbasa Sausage, Pinto Beans, Cole Slaw and
Texas Toast
Sunday
Breakfast: Egg Casserole -
Hash brown crust, Eggs & Cheese, Sausage Patties, Biscuits
and Donuts
Lunch: Hamburgers,
Chips, Left over Cole slaw and pickles
Dinner: Brisket Quesadillas, beans, slaw and chips
and there were leftovers to share to
take home on Monday. All the food was fantastic. Thanks
again as usual Jerry for feeding us so fine. I"m writing the
on Thursday and have had great lunches from the leftovers all
this week.
Here is our score summary. Bill has submitted our entry to
ARRL and I have posted on 3830. There has been some grumbling
about conditions around the country so maybe we will come out
all right with the lower than expected score.
The moon came up at 3 AM and and I got up then to get the EME
stations on. Ron was doing good on 6m Meteor Scatter. I made
no Q's on 144 or 432 EME. Did not seem to be computer problems
this time. I only say one trace from a big gun station on 432
and never saw a trace or decode on 2m. Later on Sunday, we
found that the reflock on the 432 transverter seemed to have
quit on us. We operated FT8 there some on crystal control after
we found how far off frequency we were. I prepped another 432
transverter that needed some mods to use and when we got that on
line 432 was back to normal. No idea yet why we had problems on
2m. The 2m station was used before and after on FT8 with no
issues
.
We also saw on Friday that the Bip-Bop Box for 6m antennas was
not working. Eventually we traced the problem to the Arduino
board failing. We replaced it with an plug-in Arduino Uno and
Bill did some changes to the program code to make the new Uno
board work with the set up. No problems during the contest with
6m station and a number of Q's were made into Mexico, Cuba and
South America.
But we did have some recurring problems with N1MM logging
program. Turned out there were some networking bugs in the
latest release and we installed an earlier version on all 5
station computers that finally solved the problem but that was
on Sunday. No Q's were lost but we sure spent a lot of time
rebooting the computers. That takes time because we have so
many programs running on them and as many at 13 windows open so
all have to be closed to reboot and start over. Not fun but we
got by.
Thanks to all who worked us, operated, came to visit and
otherwise supported the Fourlanders
73, Bob W4ZST