ARRL 10-Meter Contest
Call: K5TR
Operator(s): WM5R
Station: K5TR
Class: SO SSB HP
QTH: TX
Operating Time (hrs): 36
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
CW:
SSB: 2853 144
-------------------
Total: 2853 144 Total Score = 821,664
Club:
Comments:
When I arrived at the station on Friday afternoon, George was
still on the tower getting things ready to hoist the three
element yagi that would be fixed west. He had already spent
part of the day putting up the lower six element yagi fixed NE,
and running new feedlines to all of the yagis. All of the
10M antennas at K5TR are on one tower. By 2300 UTC, everything
was hooked up and ready to go. George set up a pair of
Ameritron RCS-8V switches and WX0B Stackmatches to let me
choose a wide array of antenna combinations. I could choose
any of the antennas separately, choose the stack alone, or the
stack plus either the southeast or west antenna. Once I got
going, nothing in the station failed or gave me trouble. In
fact, it got better - overnight George figured out how to set
up the second Kenwood TS-850SAT as a receiver (using a two
element 40M yagi at 97' for a receive antenna) in such a way
that I couldn't hurt it with the transmit radio.
I don't know if I was doing the right things Friday night or
not. I didn't have nearly as strong a first hour of the contest
as I did last year, and ended up at 0600 about 60 QSOs behind my
pace last year. I'm not sure what I would have done differently,
though, had I to do it over. With the Eskip Friday night, I
made a lot of use of the Kenwood TS-850SAT's "quick memo"
feature to quickly tune, hop back to my run frequency, call
CQ, get no answer, and then tune some more. From Saturday
morning on, it got even better, as I could listen to both
my run frequency and my searching frequency at the same time.
In total, though, I really didn't make that many "second radio"
QSOs - certainly less than fifty for the entire contest.
Since I could only transmit on one radio, the process of
getting the frequency set up via quick memo and then pouncing
at the right time was tricky. I've only ever tried real SO2R
once before, and I haven't really mastered it yet.
Saturday was painful. I had a really bad attack of "cedar
fever" that gave me a sore throat, post-nasal drip, achy limbs,
etc. I did not sleep well Friday night, and the symptoms lasted
all day long. I thought I was getting a cold or the flu or
something. I definitely had a hoarse voice. George came home
around 8:00 PM local time and determined that it might be the
cedar (also known as "mountain cedar," our local name for the
scrub juniper evergreen trees, which happened to be pollinating
during the weekend,) so we closed the windows, turned on the
air conditioning to start filtering the air in the shack
(outside air temperature was somewhere around 75F or 24C, but
inside the shack it had gotten up near 85F or 29C,) and I
started noticing an improvement almost right away. I took
some Tylenol Severe Allergy pills right before I went to sleep
around midnight and I woke up on Sunday feeling like a
completely different person. If you've never been to K5TR,
he lives in the middle of a cedar scrub forest (see:
http://www.kkn.net/~k5tr/photo/k5tr/k5tr-from-the-sky.jpg)
The Eskip both nights was great. Saturday night was *awesome*.
I made at least 300 Eskip QSOs that night, and the band was
still open a little bit at 0600 UTC when I quit for lack of
stations to work. Stations worked on Eskip were located
everywhere fom Minnesota to Ohio to North Carolina to Alabama.
Most were in Wisconsin and Michigan. I heard a few loud
stations for hours - I remember K4WI and WB9Z in particular.
I worked one ZL station that was loudest on my SE antenna,
and both Saturday and Sunday evening I worked a couple of
Wisconsin or Michigan stations that were definitely louder
on the 60' high yagi pointed northwest than they were on the
30' high yagi pointed northeast. Many times I got to hear
cool backscatter echoes. I love that.
I wish I had been feeling better during the weekend, but
I think it was a very worthwhile contest, and I'm glad I
did it.
2002 ARRL 10 Meter Contest - K5TR (WM5R, op.)
HR 10 CUM TOTAL SCORE
-- ------ --------- -----
0 116/19 116/19 0.00M
1 66/6 182/25 0.01M
2 37/9 219/34 0.01M
3 12/1 231/35 0.02M
4 6/0 237/35 0.02M
5 7/0 244/35 0.02M
6 --- 244/35 0.02M
7 --- 244/35 0.02M
8 --- 244/35 0.02M
9 --- 244/35 0.02M
10 --- 244/35 0.02M
11 --- 244/35 0.02M
12 8/7 252/42 0.02M
13 68/33 320/75 0.05M
14 143/12 463/87 0.08M
15 108/7 571/94 0.11M
16 151/5 722/99 0.14M
17 127/5 849/104 0.18M
18 138/5 987/109 0.22M
19 86/1 1073/111 0.24M
20 99/2 1172/113 0.26M
21 109/4 1281/117 0.30M
22 105/1 1386/118 0.32M
23 86/2 1472/120 0.35M
0 70/1 1542/121 0.37M
1 35/0 1577/121 0.38M
2 103/0 1680/121 0.40M
3 114/0 1794/121 0.43M
4 79/0 1873/121 0.45M
5 18/0 1891/121 0.45M
6 --- 1891/121 0.45M
7 --- 1891/121 0.45M
8 --- 1891/121 0.45M
9 --- 1891/121 0.45M
10 --- 1891/121 0.45M
11 --- 1891/121 0.45M
12 15/1 1906/122 0.46M
13 44/4 1950/126 0.49M
14 119/2 2069/128 0.53M
15 99/3 2168/131 0.56M
16 127/2 2295/133 0.61M
17 105/6 2400/139 0.66M
18 93/0 2493/139 0.69M
19 106/2 2599/141 0.73M
20 91/0 2690/141 0.75M
21 70/1 2760/142 0.78M
22 44/1 2804/143 0.80M
23 49/1 2853/144 0.82M
D1 1472/119
D2 1381/24
TO 2853/143
2002 ARRL 10 Meter Contest - K5TR (WM5R, op.)
Ca 178
JA 127
Ny 119
Oh 109
Pa 103
Wa 93
Mi 93
DL 90
Il 85
Va 85
Ma 81
Mn 73
Nj 73
G 62
On 61
Md 60
I 58
Tx 57
Wi 57
F 55
Ct 53
Or 50
In 44
Nc 43
Tn 35
LU 32
PY 31
Nh 29
UR 27
SP 26
Fl 25
OK 25
ON 23
EA 23
PA 22
Ga 21
Vt 19
Wv 18
Mo 17
Bc 16
Ky 16
Me 16
Hi 16
Ia 15
Ks 15
Al 15
Ab 15
Co 14
Mt 13
Ok 12
YU 12
9A 12
S5 12
Id 12
Ri 12
Ak 11
Ms 10
UA 10
Sc 10
Nv 10
VK 9
Ne 9
Sd 9
YO 9
De 9
Mb 9
Ar 8
CT 8
HB 8
Sk 7
Nd 7
HA 7
EI 7
Nb 7
La 6
GW 6
GM 6
SM 6
OE 6
Dc 6
Qc 6
Az 6
Nm 5
LY 5
OZ 5
LZ 5
GI 5
DU 5
ZL 4
OH 4
OM 4
CE 4
Nf 4
KP4 4
YV 3
EA8 3
Ns 3
CT3 3
ES 3
YL 3
ER 3
ZS 3
Wy 2
4X 2
EU 2
T9 2
HP 2
HK 2
Ut 2
HL 2
YB 2
LX 2
P4 2
TF 2
EA6 2
TI 2
CM 2
D4 1
V4 1
GD 1
39 1
ST 1
2 1
OA 1
XE 1
XT 1
KP2 1
PJ2 1
S9 1
TK 1
CN 1
7X 1
SV 1
CP 1
TA 1
V3 1
5B 1
5U 1
J3 1
ZF 1
ZD8 1
Pe 1
FY 1
TI9 1
CX 1
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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