[VHFcontesting] 222 Activity Night FN55

[N1BUG]

I was on the tower wrestling with two runs of 3/4" CATV cable I am 
installing when I realized the sun was right in my face and it was 
Tuesday. That can only mean one thing: time to get down and fire up the 
rig for 222 Activity Night! It was about 6:30 local time at that point. 
That is late in the day for me to even have my eyelids up, let alone be 
actively engaged in battle up on a tower. I guess I was still running on 
adrenaline from the excitement of discovering that I really could push 
two more runs of that cable through 90 feet of buried conduit that was 
already pretty full. The darn mice chewed off the pull rope I had in the 
conduit during the winter, but without a second person to assist it 
wouldn't have helped with this job anyway. The bad news is I was not 
able to get the first new cable through with a new pull rope alongside, 
so now I have no rope through the conduit. I might need to add another 
control cable at some point, and if I do the only option will be to pull 
an existing control cable out while pulling a rope or two new cables in. 
Oh well. It can be done, just not in a preferred or easy way.

Stations worked:

N1JEZ   FN44   SSB
K1WHS   FN43   SSB
WZ1V   FN31   SSB
K1PXE  FN31   CW
WA1PBU   FN42   CW    10 watts!
WA1T   FN43   CW

N1JEZ was surprisingly weak and I was worried about conditions. K1WHS 
was loud but I can't judge conditions from that. Dave is always loud!

WZ1V was calling CQ on CW. I tried to answer on CW but my keyer paddle 
had dust in the contacts and all I was getting was a mess of random dits 
and dahs. Ron switched over to SSB where we easily had a brief chat with 
100% copy. Things were looking up!

After Ron I wasn't hearing anybody else. I took a short break to clean 
the paddle contacts and stretch. A few minutes later I came back to hear 
K1PXE calling CQ on CW, solid 559 which is uncommonly strong for Pete. 
When I called, Pete said "Wow" and he remained very solid throughout our 
QSO.

When I finished with Pete I heard someone call me while sliding up in 
frequency. I followed and it was WA1PBU with 10 watts! Absolutely solid 
529 and I never missed a dit during the QSO.

WA1T called me right after WA1PBU. Al was solid 559 and said he was 
running without the amplifier.

After that I called CQ for a while, tuned around for a while, called CQ 
some more, tuned around some more but couldn't find anyone else to work. 
I didn't feel motivated to try FT8.

73,
Paul N1BUG
FN55mf