[SCCC] CQ WW SSB W4EF SOABHP

[Michael Tope]

                  CQWWSSB Summary Sheet

        Start Date : 2015-10-24

     CallSign Used : W4EF
       Operator(s) : W4EF

Operator Category : SINGLE-OP
Assisted Category : NON-ASSISTED
              Band : ALL
             Power : HIGH
              Mode : SSB
  Default Exchange : 3


              Name : Michael C Tope
           Address : 11018 Cardamine Dr
    City/State/Zip : Tujunga  CA   91042
           Country : USA

      ARRL Section : LAX
         Club/Team : Southern California Contest Club
          Software : N1MM Logger+ 1.0.5251.0

         Band     QSOs     Pts  ZN    Cty
          3.5       8      21    4    4
            7      12      32    4    5
           14      16      44   11   15
           21      51     149   17   29
           28      25      72   12   19
        Total     112     318   48   72


             Score : 38,160

               Rig : Yaesu FT1000MP MKV + Elecraft KPA-500 (operated 
remotely)

          Antennas : 10/15/20M Spiderbeam at 45' (now stuck pointed south)
             40M  Inverted-V at 35'
             80M  Vertical with lotsa radials

I finally got around to setting up my WiFi extender so that I get 
reliable coverage in the garage. Now I can operate my remote HF station 
while piddling around in the workshop, which is exactly what I did 
(piddled that is).

I didn't do much Friday (I worked a few JAs on 15 meters), but I was 
starting to get into it a little bit on Saturday morning as I cruised up 
15 and 10 meters working Euros. Then I just had to go and turn my 
antenna to try to get a better bead on a ZS station who couldn't hear 
me. Because of a problem with the rotator that I haven't had time to 
fix, I tried coming around counter-clockwise to the southeast stop to 
see if that was any better (clockwise I couldn't get passed about 30 
degrees). That didn't end well. The antenna now seems to be permanently 
stuck pointed due South (doh!). That let what little wind I had for the 
contest out of my sails.

On the positive side, I was finally able to devote some time to figuring 
out what went wrong when I assembled the sub-receiver in my Elecraft 
K-3. It turns out that having not read the manual was the root cause of 
the problem (remember RTFM!). Fortunately this meant the fix didn't 
involve something horrible like yanking out the sub-receiver DSP board 
and sending it back to Elecraft as I had feared. Instead, all I had to 
due was change an entry in the radio's configuration menu and tell it 
not to switch to the empty IF filter slot (double doh!).

Since my antenna was stuck south I spent the last hour or so of the 
contest handing out QSOs to various Caribbean and South American 
stations. It was a pitiful effort, but at least I can say that I 
participated and submitted a log for the "Big One".

73, Mike W4EF..........