[SCCC] N6WIN CQ WW WPX SSB SO(A)AB HP TB:WIRES

[Timothy Coker]

CQ WW WPX, SSB

 Call: N6WIN
 Operator(s): N6WIN
 Station: N6WIN
 Class: SO(A)AB HP TB:WIRES
 QTH: Rancho Cucamonga, CA
 Operating Time (hrs): 36
 Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Pref
 -------------------
 160:      0     0
  80:    221  59
  40:   265   108
  20:   550   252
  15:   632   227
  10:     92     43
 -------------------
 Total:  1760  689  Total Score = 2,382,562

 Club: Southern California Contest Club

 Comments:

Jay, W2IJ, and I had worked on putting together my home station for a couple
of months. I took the preceding week off of work in order to complete
the tower install (29' of Rohn 25G) before the contest. I really wanted to
learn my new home station in this contest. We were able to finish the
installation on Thursday before the contest. On Monday, during the install
process, I managed to impact my two front teeth using a capped steel pipe as
a slide hammer while driving down a copper ground rod inside my shack. The
damage was quite extensive with bits of tooth shattering off and another
tooth folding backwards. This occurred due to the cap being broken by the
"softer" copper rod (the best I can figure is when the rod broke the cap, it
allowed the pipe to slide down the rod and impact my mouth while resonating
back and forth). It made for interesting eating habits during the contest.

Never the less I was able to operate for the full 36 hours allowed. I
realized a few things about my station. I am loud to the east coast, but I
am not loud into Europe. N6QQ, N6ED, and N6WK consistently had me eating
their dust in the EU piles. My SB221 hung in there, despite being hot as a
cup of coffee on the case. I was really glad to have the high power as the
bands got congested quickly. I never did have a good JA run, but I was
surprised to have E51COF call in a couple of times while trying to run JA's.

The FT2000 worked great. I especially liked the ease of using DSP
for filtering and dynamic notch filtering to cut out the carriers. I was
overly impressed with the old TH7DX rebuild at only 30'.

Operating equipment:

Yaesu FT2000
Heathkit SB-221
Hygain TH7DX 30'
40m D40 rotatable dipole 35'
80m shortened double bazooka inv-v 27'
Writelog