                    North American QSO Party, SSB - January

Call: W4BW
Operator(s): W4BW
Station: W4BW

Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Gerogia
Operating Time (hrs): 10.0

Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160:   15    11
   80: 164    40
   40:   88    37
   20: 152    33
   15: 101    18
   10:    5     4
-------------------
Total: 525   143 Total Score = 75,075

Club: South East Contest Club

Team: SECC #1

Comments:

Great contest - I really like the format of NAQP with stns / mults by band and the 10 hr length. This is my favorite domestic contest of the year.

I planned a substatial Part Time effort, and ended up having such a good time that I had to make it a full 10 hrs. 15m was pretty good for me, but 20m seemed to have a higher than usual QRN level and just never produced as I had hoped. 40m seemed to go long early and I just never got cranked up there as I needed. And I think there are some opportunities to greatly improve over my 40m sloper antenna. I did get a small opening on 10m to the west coast only and snagged a few Q's and Mults there. Tnx to K4WZ for the QSY to 10m for GA as a mult.

I lost about 25 mins of operating time when I took a dinner break and came back with about 5 mins to go to make a 30 min off time. As I sat down at the rig, a station who was runing on the 40m freq the rig happened to be on went QRT and there was a beautiful frequency available, just begging me to call "CQ". I still wasn't planning to go the full 10 hrs, so it was too good to pass up. I should have waited the 5 mins to make it a 30+ min off time and ignored the inviting freq. Lesson learned!

I also learned there is another contester in Stockbridge. I kept bumpting into Dennis - K4NV on all bands. Turns out he lives just a few miles away and he had a great signal and big rate. It's good to meet another contester in your back yard, but not too close in your backyard!