[SCCC] CQP N7DA

[Drew Arnett]

TL;DR - a modest 11K points for SCCC

I found out how fun CQP was last year, so I definitely wanted to play
again this year.

I'm still interested in finding good locations for portable HF
contesting in SoCal.  Any leads are much appreciated.  (SS and CQ WW
still to go this year.)

With the forest service closure, I planned on 9 hours Saturday and 6
hours Sunday from a city park.  Horizon isn't fantastic there, but
it's better than home and the RFI is mostly non-existent.

On my todo list for this winter is portable power to support 100W
portable contesting.  So, I ran QRP (5W) this weekend off of a gell
cell.  Yikes! My goal going in was 200 QSOs and 40 mults.  Gear:
KX3
20m dipole 25 ft
40m inverted V 28 ft
A new experiment - mouse free raspberry Pi contest logger  -- worked
great!  5 W draw.  Much better match than a 40 or 80 W laptop!

Got setup a bit after 9am Saturday and had my usual slow start when I
haven't operated CW since the last contest.  I gave up trying to call
CQ as N7DA, so added a /6 after a bit for much better results.

QRP was interesting.  Definitely had to follow the propagation.  Never
tried calling, but did some S&P on 20 and 40 for some phone QSOs.  Did
a lot of calling on CW and a fair amount of S&P as well.  Interesting
trying to call QRP.  Got some short runs to 30/hr, but nothing like
the rate you'd hope for at 100W.  S&P was very interesting, too.
Usually bang QSO done, but if there was a rare SEQUOIA letter with a
giant loud pileup, I had no chance.  Requests for fills didn't happen
much, and I worked all over.  Managed to snag some of the good 15m
early.  40m mid afternoon for the loud short hop is always a boon for
the QRPer.  Good for some QSO count though not as many mults in CQP.
:-)  Serious aluminum I hear makes QRP more entertaining.  :-)

I took Sunday off.

band/mode/Qs
15 CW 5
20 SSB 4
20 CW 71
40 SSB 5
40 CW 22

QSO points:  306
Mults:  36+1 (CA)
Total score:  11322

Best regards,

Drew
n7da

Mults worked
AK
AR
CA
CO
FL
HI
IA
ID
IL
IN
KS
LA
MA
MD
MN
MO
MR
MS
MT
NC
NE
NH
NJ
NY
OH
OK
ON
PA
SK
TN
TX
UT
VA
VT
WA
WI
WV

Counties worked
ALAM
AMAD
CALA
CCOS
MEND
RIVE
SCLA
SCRU
SDIE
SHAS
SMAT
SOLA