[SCCC] K6NA WW Phone

[Glenn Rattmann]

Hi Dick (and a few others who sent notes... thanks)!  I'll post this 
to the whole list in case some guys want to see more comments:

Thanks!  Had fun, even though I was tired at the start due to the 
fire stress (little sleep for 5 nights) and because I had to carry in 
my Alpha amps and two Mark Fives etc. from the evacuation cars on 
Friday, and took most of the day to get things hooked up again and 
help make the house liveable.  Wow.  So I decided to sleep about 4 
hours a night and that made it easy to stay awake for the rest of it.

On 10 the opening to most of South America was good, but 
selective.  No EU or Africa.  Only KH7X worked in the Pacific.  I 
finally got to work a few guys with my "new" 6 element 10m yagi at 
148 feet, which I put up in Fall of '05 just prior to the new 40m 
beam going up on the same mast.  The ten definitely works.  It was 
typically a few dB better than my low ten at 45 feet, on a separate 
tower close to the house.

The 15m JA opening was decent both days but I had a lot of line noise 
there due to the Santa Ana winds knocking things loose all over the 
area.  On 15 to Europe, I had a pipeline to EA/CT.  Very few others-- 
couple Italians, couple F, maybe EI7M-- unbelievably poor to the rest 
of the continent. Zero Scandanavians.  I never CQed successfully to 
EU (I have 4 over 4 that band).

On 20 I had a few Europeans but basically it was a near-shutout down 
here.  I never could CQ there until the last hour when I did have 
small success.  My antenna on 20 is 5 over 5!  I can listen to W7WA 
and K7RL working stuff over the north all hours of the day and night, 
and I hear 5% of it, weakly.  They are in a different contest up 
there.  So you guys with small 20m antennas, who dream of 5 over 5 in 
SoCal-- just move to Seattle and keep the small antenna!

On 40 the most notable thing was near-total absence of shortpath 
Europe.  Like a black hole.  Again, the EA/F group was fine but very 
few others were heard.  I haven't experienced that very often, since 
I have an exceptionally good antenna on that band.  In the morning LP 
I could hear many of them but of course by then they don't listen up 
for US.  The JA opening was good both nights, but even with a good 
antenna it is a constant battle to hold the receive frequency, and to 
recognize when the BC stations are ruining your own transmit 
frequency-- it's hard work, moving around, changing strategy on the fly.

80 was about typical for me.  The main difference this year was that 
we could transceive on DX stations spread out from about 3650 to 
3800, under our new rules.  It seemed to help a little overall, but 
keeping the antenna match tuned over that wide bandwidth was a 
constant nuisance in the shack.  I slept through the morning LP times 
both mornings this year-- oh well.

160 sounded about typical for October... not great.  I had an antenna 
problem show up Friday night which put me out of business there-- 
there is an old DowKey relay out in my switchbox for 160, and it has 
happened before-- I have to retrieve it to the workbench, take it 
apart and clean its contacts, and I didn't bother to try fixing it 
during the weekend.

If anyone not already familiar is interested in more details of my 
station, please see:

http://www.pvrc.org/WCSD/WCSDSearch.htm

It's not perfectly updated, but you can see the basics.

73, Glenn K6NA

At 11:19 AM 10/31/2007, you wrote:
>Great Glenn...doesn't seem like the fires slowed you down...NICE!  Glad
>to hear all is well at your end.  CONGRATS
>
>73
>Dick - W6TK
>
>
>On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:10:28 -0700 Glenn Rattmann <k6na at cts.com> writes:
> > CQ Worldwide DX Contest, SSB
> >
> >
> > Call: K6NA
> > Operator(s): K6NA
> > Station: K6NA
> >
> >
> > Class: SOAB HP
> > QTH: CA
> > Operating Time (hrs): 38
> > Radios: SO2R
> >
> >
> > Summary:
> >   Band  QSOs  Zones  Countries
> > ------------------------------
> >    160:   11     8        7
> >     80:   82    21       35
> >     40:  340    27       55
> >     20:  272    28       71
> >     15:  435    27       68
> >     10:   83    10       20
> > ------------------------------
> > Total: 1223   121      256  Total Score = 1,230,151
> >
> >
> > Club: Southern California Contest Club