[VHFcontesting] FW: ARRL Jan VHF N8RA Single Op LP

[Chet S]

                   ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes

Call: N8RA
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: FN31 CT
Operating Time (hrs): 11
Radios: SO2R
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
    6:  102    21
    2:   74    20
  222:   16     5
  432:   19     5
  -------------------
Total:  211    51  Total Score = 12,546

Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club

Comments:
Having to dig out from an east coast snow/sleet/ice event in the morning, I
was not sure what activity and conditions would be like. I believe both were
down on Saturday. And only two quick E's contacts were made on 6M right at
the start. 

An improvement done here this summer was to rework the 3 element 6M yagi
stack into 5 element OWA's and I was anxious to see how they played. I
seemed able to work almost everyone I heard. Is it better than before? That
is always hard to know, but I was satisfied.

Best tropo contacts were about 320 miles on 6M (FM18), 350 miles on 2M
(FM09), and 200 miles on 222 and 432 (FM29). 

I quit early Sunday evening, but not due to lack of activity. When moving
through the bands with a rover on 222, he said that my signal took a sudden
drop. I wondered why, but kept going. A few minutes later my MYL came
rushing into the shack announcing something is burning in the next room
where some amplifiers are located to minimize fan noise in the shack. She
had smelled noxious smoke upstairs. Omigosh!! Sure enough something was
emitting a cloud of awful smelling smoke, so I shut down the power there.
The smoke was coming from a 110v power strip that supplies power to the 222
amp plus a wall wart and a small I/O supply. This power strip and its fuse
holder were too hot to touch and I have yet to do the post mortem to see
what failed inside that and/or the 222 amp. I hate to think what could have
happened if it had gone unnoticed a while longer.  

This was the first contest using the new N1MM Logger Plus and it looked and
worked very nicely without a hiccup, but for VHF I do miss the old grid
square map where it was so easy to see what grids in what direction were
missing on a band. 

Thanks everyone!
73
Chet, N8RA






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