[SECC] Fwd: NAQP SSB AA4LR Single Op LP

[Bill Coleman]

                   North American QSO Party, SSB - January

Call: AA4LR
Operator(s): AA4LR
Station: AA4LR

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: GA
Operating Time (hrs): 10

Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
 160:   28    14
  80:  193    38
  40:  156    37
  20:   92    28
  15:   80    18
  10:    6     2
-------------------
Total:  555   137  Total Score = 76,035

Club: South East Contest Club

Team: 

Comments:

Antennas:
Cushcraft A3S/A743 at 15m (40-10m)
80/40m trap dipole at 10m (80m, 40m)
Shunt-fed 15m tall tower (160m, 80m)

Equipment:
K2/100 w/ KAT100 running 100 watts
Kenwood TS-430S w/ AT-250
K1KP-style voice keyer (1 message)

Comments:

Glad I got the opportunity to put in a full effort on this one. Not quite a 10 hour effort, with the numerous small breaks, and I had a hard stop just after 0500z.

Started about 25 minutes late. I was really hoping to find good conditions on 15m, possibly 10m. Very disappointed. 15m was quite long, and 10m was barely open, but virtually no one was listening or calling there. When conditions are like this, I think I often mess up my score by expecting to get more from 10m and 15m. I keep returning to these bands in case a miss something, hoping to catch an opening, and this keeps me off 20m or even 40m. Really, though we haven't had good conditions on 10m since 2005,

By the time I really hit 20m in the 2000z hour, it was already sorta long, so we didn't have the short propagation conditions we need to really rack up the Qs here in GA. Still I could get good rate by hunting and pouncing on 20m, and even managed a short run in the 2100z hour. 

The other thing that messes me up on these conditions is the feeling that if I go to 40m before 0000z, I'm missing out on something -- spending time working stations on 40m would be easier to work later in the evening. In retrospect, I shouldn't have worried so much, and work a bit of 40m sooner.

With 20m closing down about an hour after sundown, it would have made more sense to push 40m. Oh well, by the time I learn, we might actually have good conditions. 40m really felt like the money band. I found three or four
different places to run. I felt loud on 40m. The trap dipole works well, and it is great to be able to switch between the NE/SW trap dipole and the rotatable dipole on the A3S going NW/SE.

80m was very noisy. I managed to find a nice spot high in the band. I had steer clear of several ragchewers. After about 8 minutes, a couple of ragchewers started up about 1 kHz above me, completely tearing my frequency up. I barely managed to finish a contact with WF7T. Really annoyed me. I wanted to shift up there and give them a piece of my mind about interfering with ongoing communications, but I didn't want to sit through any 5 minute monologs about cancer treatments. I moved up even higher and had a good run.

The evening was shaping up to be a pretty standard effort in these poor conditions -- maybe 50,000 points. Then the magic happened. Just after 0405z, I found a clear place near 3830 kHz and an amazing run started. I worked 82
stations in less than 40 minutes. I probably could have continued for another 20 minutes there, but decided I needed to go to 160m to pick up a few more mults there. Virtually all these contacts were on the trap dipole -- the
vertical was rarely better.

Anyway, a pretty good outing for a not-terribly-serious effort.

Oh. I checked the SO2R box, but I didn't do more than listen with the TS430 in the first 30 minutes. I had a report of bad audio on 10m, so I unhooked my homebrew SO2R box for the rest of the contest.

Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/

Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Web: http://boringhamradiopart.blogspot.com
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
            -- Wilbur Wright, 1901