[NCC] K8MR Sprint

[Jim K8MR via NCC]

The 3830 site is acting oddly - which may also be why guys have 
multiple postings. So anyway:

80:   72
40:  117
20:   120

309 X 44 = 15396

Team: SE Sprint Coalition

Fist, a big thank you to George, K5KG, for having me over to operate 
the Sprint. Waterfront QRP daylight operations in NAQP etc are cool, 
but QRP Sprints after dark are not my idea of fun.

Only problem, not major, was with logging. George is a WriteLog guy, 
I'm not. So I decided I'd bring in my laptop with N1MM and just plug 
into his radios. Unfortunately, after spending some at home in the 
afternoon practicing N1MM ESM operation, it turned out I had to keep 
George's Microham interface in line to handle the antenna switching. 
Naturally we couldn't figure out how to get that to talk to my 
computer, so I didn't have computer-radio communications. I realized 
about 10 QSOs in that ESM in a Sprint doesn't work so well when N1MM 
doesn't know you've QSY'd. But I ran pretty smoothly without ESM, 
probably fewer mistakes that it would have been with it.

Florida propagation is fun, at least on 40 and 20. Forty was grim at 
first, with Sprint sandwiched between the RTTY above 050 and the K1N 
pileup below 040. But once K1N moved to another band/mode, 40 was 
great. I missed all the same mults as everybody else. No Wyoming, not 
so unusual, but missing Connecticut?!

A lot more FL activity than last year, when I was also here, and it was 
just N4OX and me. This year I don't know if I'll be able to crack 3th 
place in the state! But it's still better to be drinking my morning 
coffee today out in the sunshine.

73  -  Jim  K8MR

==================

Good to work lots of MRRC/NCC folks. A bit odd not being on the 
MRRC/NCC team, but I offered my team services to the station host, and 
my offer was accepted. At least having KU8E on the MRRC/NCC team evened 
out the karma.

73  -  Jim