[SCCC] W4EF ARRL SS Reports

[Michael Tope]

Between work, home projects, and trying to rebuild my broken-down remote 
station, I had limited time available for Sweepstakes this year. 
Nevertheless, I did manage to get on a little for both modes. I did the 
SS CW locally from my remote site in the high desert. The Spiderbeam 
Yagi was stuck due South because of a rotor problem, but I was able to 
Armstrong it so it pointed almost due east. I did this using the base 
rotation capability of the AB-577. I would have rotated it a little 
farther, but I had to stop when the pulley hanger I'd installed near the 
top of the tower ran into the southwest guy wire. In any case, it was 
good enough for decent CONUS coverage.

I got on the air in the early afternoon on Sunday, so I was able to get 
a great rate fix on 20 CW. My peak 60 minute rate hit 93 per hour and my 
10 minute peak rate hit 114 per hour which is pretty good for lid like me.

The weekend between CW and Phone SS, I lowered the tower and removed the 
dud rotor. As a result the tower was down and the Spiderbeam was 3ft off 
the ground for the phone contest. I had to use my 40/20 parallel dipoles 
for 15 and 20 meters instead of the Yagi.

I did my phone effort using remote control from my garage in Tujunga. I 
got a later start than for the CW contest and conditions generally 
seemed down, so I mainly searched and pounced. I was using WiFi to 
connect to the internet on the control point side, which seems to be 
source of trouble. I lost my connection several times and needed to 
either disable the WiFi card on my computer or power cycle the router to 
get the connection back up. The hosed WiFi connection also mucked up my 
VNC server at the remote site, making it necessary to reboot the remote 
computer to get things back up and running. This happened two or three 
times in all which ate a lot of otherwise good operating time (note to 
self - drop a hardwired Ethernet connection to the garage).

I've got a rebuilt rotor in hand, tested, and ready to go, so there is 
small, but non-zero, chance that I'll have the Spiderbeam back in the 
air and turning for CQ Worldwide CW.

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


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                   SSCW Summary Sheet

        Start Date : 2015-11-08
     CallSign Used : NI6W
       Operator(s) : W4EF
Operator Category : SINGLE-OP
Assisted Category : NON-ASSISTED
              Band : ALL
             Power : HIGH
              Mode : CW

          Band    QSOs    Pts  Sec
           14     165     330   59
           21       1      2    1
        Total     166     332   60
------------------------------------
        Score : 19,920

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                  SSSSB Summary Sheet

        Start Date : 2015-11-21
     CallSign Used : W4EF
       Operator(s) : W4EF
Operator Category : SINGLE-OP
Assisted Category : NON-ASSISTED
              Band : ALL
             Power : HIGH

         Band     QSOs     Pts  Sec
          3.5       6      12    1
            7      24      48    9
           14      43      86   25
           21      23      46   17
        Total      96     192   52
-----------------------------------
        Score : 9,984

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