Stew Perry Topband Challenge
Call: N6WG
Operator(s): N6WG
Station: N6WG
Class: Single Op QRP
QTH: Newark CA
Operating Time (hrs): 13
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 142 Total Score = 1,728
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
I had a feeling this would be a good outing when my previous best
first hour QSO count fell right away. When I resumed in the evening,
the increased rate continued. By midnight, I had beaten my previous
best year's total, so opted for a few hours of sleep in spite of my
plan to pull an all nighter. Didn't need to. Wound up beating my
previous best by 31%.
It took a lot of persistence, though, as almost no DX was heard or
worked, except AK and HI. Only two east coast stations were worked,
in MA and DEL. No Caribbean even heard. I found that of 74 grid
squares worked, 51 were only worked once. Only 23 had at least two
QSOs. One, CN87 in Puget Sound, Washington, lead all the other grid
squares by a big margin with 13 QSOs. No idea why.
A first for me in this contest was CQing much more heavily. I
normally focus on S&P, feeling that a QRP signal would just be over-
looked in the commotion. This time I had 50 of 142 QSOs through
CQing, and could have had more if I had not taken a couple of hours
for sleep in the early morning.
We had a very heavy rain starting late Saturday afternoon, and it
was still going strong at contest's end Sunday morning. I'm very
glad my rotating tuned loop performed well, as my big Flag must have
been looking right into a big noise source. It wasn't much use this
weekend.
My vertical is remotely tuned with a motorized capacitor. In the
night, during the heaviest rain, my SWR went crazy, so I had to use the
ATU in my K2 to match the band segments above and below the DX window.
It worked out ok, and I soldiered on. I found out today that rain had
gotten inside the weather housing and in between the capacitor plates,
seriously detuning them. I fixed the leak and blew the water out of
the tuning capacitor plates.
Now it's time to start planning for the CQ 160 CW. Hope to work
many of you there.
Merry Christmas and 73 to all,
Bob N6WG
The Little Station with Attitude
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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