[SCCC] WPX CW - NI6W

[Michael Tope]

                  CQWPXCW Summary Sheet

        Start Date : 2021-05-29

     CallSign Used : NI6W
       Operator(s) : W4EF

Operator Category : SINGLE-OP
Assisted Category : NON-ASSISTED
              Band : 20M
             Power : HIGH
              Mode : CW
  Default Exchange : #
        Gridsquare : DM14AN

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

      ARRL Section : LAX
         Club/Team : Southern California Contest Club
          Software : N1MM Logger+ 1.0.9143.0

         Band     QSOs     Pts  WPX  Pt/Q
           14    1110    2052  614   1.8
        Total    1110    2052  614   1.8


             Score : 1,259,928
               Rig : Elecraft K3 Alpha 87 (Friday) Alpa 91B (Saturday 
and Sunday)

          Antennas : 5-Band HD Spiderbeam up 16 Mtr + 20M Inverted-Vee 
at 6 Mtr

           Soapbox :

I operated from the 0000 UTC start to ~1:30 AM local time on Saturday 
(08:30 UTC) when my Alpha 87A completely died. It had been rock solid 
until about 12:30 AM local when it started to randomly retune every 10 
minutes or so (an old problem that I thought was fixed). When it finally 
died, a cold restart wouldn't clear the fault indicators, so I went to 
bed (things were getting slow anyway). Later on Saturday morning (I 
think around 5 AM local) I tried swapping to my backup amplifier (Alpha 
91B), but there was no RF output, so I went back to bed deciding that 
fate didn't want my butt in a chair all weekend.

I tried backup amplifier #2 (Drake L7) later on Saturday after goofing 
around all-day, but it had the same problem - no RF output. Then it 
dawned on me that both amplifiers were acting as if someone had swapped 
the input and output cables. I was convinced that this was impossible 
despite the fact that neither cable is labelled. "But I never removed 
the RF output cable from the wattmeter directional bridge", I thought. 
Turns out that I had (doh!).

After re-installing the Alpha 91B, I operated on and off on Saturday 
night (local time) and most of the day Sunday. I wanted to make at least 
1000 QSOs and 1 million points. It was nice to finally have a rotary 
gain antenna up in the air again after something like 6 years using low 
dipoles on the high bands. I switched to the low 20 meter inverted-V 
occasionally to remind myself how much better a Yagi @ 50 feet plays 😁

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