[UK-CONTEST] ARRL CW 80m Single Op High Power - G3P

[Mike Chamberlain]

With minimum daylight hours available to play radio over the weekend I
decided to try a somewhat casual single operator, non assisted, 80m, high
power entry. In the end I managed just over 13 hours of operating for 384
QSOs including 2 dupes.

I found conditions just fractionally better on Sunday morning than Saturday
morning, but my assessment is that they were poor on both days. I didn't
have a single QSO to the West of a line from the top of the Gulf of
California past the Western edge of the Great Lakes up to the South Eastern
edge of Hudson Bay.  I believe I worked all of the states to the East of
that line with the exception of West Virginia and the DC region.  I also
missed VO1 and VO2 which should have been easy.  I put in a 90 minute
session on Sunday night just prior to the end of the contest for 22
additional QSOs including the 2 dupes.  QSB was deep and fast during all
sessions, many QSOs appearing out of the noise for only a few seconds.
Having said that many of the big East coast stations just seem to always be
there without significant QSB.

Claimed QSOs:              384
Dupes:                              2
States/Provinces              39
Points:                        44694

On Thursday of last week I'd built a new shack computer out of some old bits
and pieces I had (2.7 GHz P4 and Windows XP) and installed N1MM and the rest
of my radio software. I use CW keying generated directly by N1MM on the
printer port.  At about 2 am on Sunday morning I noticed the CPU utilisation
shoot up to 100% - oops - guess who had not set an alternative time for
Microsoft Security Essentials to perform its scan?   I decided to leave it
running and as far as I can tell the keyer in N1MM never missed a beat.

Equipment:
FT2K TX/RX
ACOM 1000 Linear
40m sloper antenna for TX
K9AY for RX (most of the time)
Power: 400W.  If I tried to run much more I'd get severe arching in the ATU
due to the voltage feed of the 40m sloper TX antenna.

It was hard work for 384 QSOs, but enjoyable.

73,
Mike /G3WPH/G3P