[SECC] Claimed Score - NAQP SSB W4AN(W1BO) Single Op LP

[Jeremy - W1BO]

                   North American QSO Party, SSB - August

Call: W4AN
Operator(s): W1BO
Station: W4AN

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: AL
Operating Time (hrs): 8

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:    0     0
   80:    0     0
   40:  185    37
   20:   37    22
   15:    0     0
   10:    0     0
-------------------
Total:  222    59  Total Score = 13,320

Club: South East Contest Club

Team: SECC #1

Comments:

FT-950 â€" Windom at 50 ft, 80m Dipole (defunct) 100 watts â€" Great fun!
Started out on time and was working 20 meters and found that even calling CQ
over and over I got very few, so made few quick S&P Runs to pick up the few
that I did get â€" Although there was a plethora of DX stations but none of the
usual suspects were playing along with this one apparently. Went up to 15 meters
and called for a while and didn’t even get one reply â€" once again heard all
the DX in the world but nothing US. So I decided to take one of my breaks a lot
earlier than I had planned just out of pure frustration. After a quick bite to
eat and taking care of a few things came back in started back on 20 meters and
still nothing, so I went ahead and started running SO2V working about 5 mins on
40 and 5 mins on 20 after a while 40 meters started picking up a little so I
moved to a good clear freq down in the general portions and took to calling CQ,
after a while I absolutely could not believe what happened I went on a run that
just wouldn’t stop! This lasted for a good while I know that at one point my
rate was going at 144/hr which I wish it would have just kept going like that
that for the rest of the night. Had to move frequency a few times because of
interference and gave up a GREAT frequency to KB4KBS to run on with his SE for
Abby, Scott I hope that I got it good and warmed up for you (now that I went
back and looked someone had spotted me there so that gave you an advantage for
those who used clusters). I hope that you did  great with it!

Well about 0300z I decided it was time to start looking at moving down to 80
meters since I was running a really low rate on 40 by this point so I went
ahead and moved over to the 80 meter antenna. Apparently this was where Mr.
Murphy decided that he wanted to interject himself into the event for me. I
couldn’t get the antenna to tune up for nothing. I pulled out the analyzer
and looked it over a few times trying to figure out what was wrong with it and
couldn’t figure it out to save my life everything looked great on the
analyzer but as soon as I hooked it up to the rig the SWR was high and
wouldn’t tune and I wasn’t comfortable enough to run the antenna with a
mismatch like I had. Well I went ahead and moved back down to 40 meters started
calling CQ again since all the guys I found on S&P I had already worked before.
And then the battle of the nets was horrible. My poor youngest decided he
wanted to sit with daddy and listen for a bit about this time and when he did
the poor guy knocked my drink over on my keyboard on accident â€" for those of
you who don’t know Mt. Dew is bad for keyboards so I tried to make a quick
swap over to another keyboard but by this point my son had already convinced me
that it was time to go lay down and watch a movie so I am taking an alibi on
this one and admitting that I was a sucker and went and watched a movie with
him how can you not when he tells you out of the blue “Daddy, you are the
greatest daddy!” and coming from a 4 year old out of the blue that means a
lot, so I had to do the right thing and go be a great daddy.  (my intent was to
wait till he fell asleep then get back on for the rest of the contest but when I
woke up at 6am this morning I figured it was a little late for that idea)

But a great time all and all, the conditions early on were amazing â€" wish
they were that good for the WAE contest for sure thought about taking a quick
break from the contest to work VU2KP who was booming in across the pole but
decided against it. A few lessons learned out of this one for myself and maybe
some others in the same situation, I was using my IF-2000 with a Softrock as my
pan adapter very early on in the contest but due to the way I configure the
system was unable to send the CAT commands to the FT-950 to key the DV-6 voice
triggers so I was a little disappointed when I had to give up the pan adapter
and go back to the regular way of operating. (Think I am just going to have to
trade in for the DMU-2000 instead) or maybe even trade my FT-950 and FT-897 in
for an FT-2000 with the DMU2000 so I can run true SO2V (which really does
nothing more than allow me to jump bands really quickly and not have to
configure everything each time I do). I should have probably made more use of
my beam than I did as well. Also there were a MANY number of stations that I
know were not running 100 watts which was really frustrating to such a point
that I even went back and told one of them that he was splattering 3khz + and
â€" (only cause I knew he was coving one of my SECC brethren), But all and all
looking forward to working you all in the WAE Phone.

Jeremy
W1BO (W4AN)


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