Someone once said "If you live long enough you will see everything!"
Well, if someone did not say that, it should have been said.
SSCW96 started out with typical (I thought) conditions and 20 meters in
fair shape. Did not hear a signal on 15 at all during the first part of
the contest, so concentrated on 20. Had some good runs, even though the
new computer locked up when running CT under the Windoze 95
environment....(NEVER had this problem with OS/2). My computer generated
CW sounded pretty bad, so I switched CT to run under DOS mode and finally
the program was sending what it was supposed to do. Still had some
lock-ups that always managed to occur during runs.
Things were going good until I switched to 40....Where was the
band......VSWR looked good, but that looks good into my Heath Cantenna too,
so out to the tower in a blinding blizzard to verify that the antenna was
still there. It was and was playing antenna to the best of its ability.
Proceeded to get back into the warmth and verified the antenna with the
charts I keep for just such purposes. Decided that the band was broken,
not the antenna. Went to 80 and proceeded to do well, but remained puzzled
about 40.
Had moderate success with 80 and decided that it would be a very nice night
to start a fire in the fireplace, open a bottle of my dwindling supply of
Duckhorn Merlot and watch the ever-mounting snow accumulation. Being
retired and so forth, I now have the wisdom to do such things as opposed to
wrenching more QSOs out the broken bands. All in all, I think the
propagation conditions were the most "unique" in my feeble memory. What I
really mean is that conditions suck!
Had a wonderful sleep (the score shows it) and got up to play on 15 and 20
on Sunday. Did make some tries at 40, but never was able to get things
going on that band. The 40 meter band was never short. It was open into
California at high noon right here in the non banana belt of the Southern
Tier.
Did mangage to work all section for a sweep with KH6 being the last one.
Thanks to Jack KH6/W1WEF, I got a sweep. Wyoming was on during Sunday PM
and he had a wailing pileup that necessitated operating split. Sure was
nice to have a portable /8 NWT come back to a CQ.... Only worked one each
VE1 and VE2. Actually worked a plethora of VE7 and VE6s too.
This was the first real test for me of the FT1000MP during CW SS and I
continue to be amazed at how well it performs. Only problem I noticed was
if I used the 250 hertz filter, I could get too close to other stations
that would affect my rate somewhat. I use a Timewave DSP 59+ in addition
to all the DSP filtering and the IF filtering in the Yaesu, and it is
really neat! Did not notice intermod on any band and not once did I engage
the IPO button on the front panel. Its really nice to own a superlative
piece of radio gear like this transceiver!
Did notice a few things during SS. The number of "desired" call signs was
significant. Not a lot of alphabet soup types, but some really old/neat
callsigns from the past. Was kind of looking for a burst of dots from
Hawaii, but it was not to be! Did work some of the old CD crowd like Bud,
K2KIR and Gary W1ECH and other too. Of course, W2PV is now officially in
my log.
Thanks to everyone who worked me and to the ARRL for sponsoring this
venerable annual event.
Breakdown (non physical) follows:
160....0
80 .....229
40 .....192
20 .....233
15 ..... 56
10 ......0
Totals 710 QSO with 78 sections for 110,760 points ....High Power...In 15
hours
Club.....Clubless
Dog....Faithful Sadie D. Defender Dachschund Dogge -- exhausted after the
celebration of the Hallowed Wiener on 10/31
Radio....Yaesu FT1000MP
Antennas.....yes
If no one shows up to operate during SS Phone, I will see some of you
during that time regardless of the weather and sleeping dogs.
Natan W6XR/2
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