[SECC] NAQP CW NJ8J Single Op LP

[Ben Coleman]

                     North American QSO Party, CW - January

Call: NJ8J
Operator(s): NJ8J
Station: NJ8J

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

Summary:
  Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   160:    5     5
    80:  151    33
    40:  170    42
    20:   60    23
    15:   17     6
    10:
-------------------
Total:  403   109  Total Score = 43,927

Club: South East Contest Club

Team: SECC#2

Comments:

Icom IC-7300
LDG AT-11MP Automatic Antenna tuner
10M Half-square
110 ft OCF doublet fed with ladder-line
Logger: N1MM+

A new high score for NAQP CW.  Would have been higher, except sometime 
in the 1900Z hour, I went up to check 10M, and switched over to the 10M 
half-square.  I found nothing on 10, but forgot to switch back over to 
the doublet when I went back to 15 and 20.  It stayed there until late 
in the 2300Z hour, when I realized that I was still on the 10M 
half-square.  I thought the bands had gotten worse (signals were mostly 
down in the mud), and the strange thing was I would call someone on 20 
and a few seconds after I finished, the noise floor would rise about 
10db (quite visible on the IC-7300 spectrum scope) for about 10-15 
seconds.  This generally meant that I had just enough time to hear the 
other station call me and then the noise would come up just as he sent his
exchange.  I had to reduce power to about 35 watts on 20 to keep this 
from happening.  I'm really not sure how running 100W on 20M into the 
10M half-square resulted in this effect.  but the net result was I had 
about 3 hours of 20M operating where my rate was effectively halved.  I 
realized the problem when I moved down to 40M and the AT-11MP wouldn't 
match like usual (kinda strange that the AT-11MP actually matched the 
half-square on 20).

Operation on 40 was a lot more fun.  0000Z hour was a 60Q hour, all S&P, 
which actually beat the 0100Z hour, where I managed a 21Q run.  0000Z 
through 0400Z all had >52Qs/hour, mostly S&P, on 40 and 80.

This is my first NAQP with the IC-7300 and the first with keying through 
the Mortty (think Winkeyer clone) instead of the straight key.  The 
250Hz filter setting came in handy on 80, along with the occasional 
tweak of the twin PBT to narrow it down ever further.

Ben
-- 
Ben Coleman nj8j at benshome.net
  "I love the way Microsoft follows standards.  In much the
same manner that fish follow migrating caribou."
                                             Paul Tomblin

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