ARRL DX Contest, SSB - 2021
Call: ZF5T
Operator(s): ZF9CW
Station: ZF9CW
Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Cayman Brac
Operating Time (hrs): 45
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 245 48
80: 619 55
40: 1688 59
20: 2369 60
15: 942 49
10: 0 0
-------------------
Total: 5863 271 Total Score = 4,766,619
Club:
Comments:
After the CW weekend I thought I had my fill of radio contests for a long time
and had no intention of working this contest. However, I changed my mind and
decided that I would try to beat my score from a couple years ago as ZF9CW.
That didn’t happen but I gave it a good effort.
I had some big problems when I went to 15m on Saturday morning. There was a
tremendous amount of RF getting everywhere it should not be. I spent about four
hours trying to figure out what to do using the ferrite I had on one or two
cables at a time, changing amplifiers, eliminating the triplexer and band pass
filters, etc. I made some contacts during that time but probably only a fourth
of what I should have made. I thought I at least had a setup where I could
operate with lower power and get by for the duration until I went to 20 and 15
on Sunday morning to find that the SWR was sky high. Turns out something
happened to my stack match and the looming, complete failure on Sunday morning
was the source of my RF problems on Saturday. After hooking the coax (from the
station to the tower) directly to the coax from the top antenna the SWR was
normal and all the RF problems went away. There is a huge span between East and
West coast directions from here and I didn’t like having to turn the one
antenna back and forth. I tried just putting them in parallel using a T
connector but the SWR was over 2-1 and the Flex PG-XL didn’t like it. I’ll
perform an autopsy on the stack match sometime this week.
I am always happy when I survive a 48 hour contest and give it a good effort.
Thanks for all the contacts and for the multipliers who moved to work me.
That’s always a fun part of a contest.
73... Stan
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