ARRL SWEEPSTAKES 1998
Call: KB0VVT Country: USA
Mode: CW Category: Multi Single
BAND QSO QSO PTS SECTIONS
160 0 0 0
80 0 0 0
40 49 98 0
20 14 28 0
15 47 94 0
10 0 0 0
-----------------------------------
Totals 110 220 47 = 10,340
6.6 Hours of Operation.
Power Output: 100 watts
Operator List: KB0VVT assisted by my Dad KG0US.
Equipment Description:
TS850SAT 100 W to R7 Vertical Up 30 ft.
MFJ 492X Memory Keyer.
Club Affiliation: KANSAS CITY DX CLUB
Comments:
Tnx. very much for all the QSOs!! I had lots of fun in the contest. I
was pleased when people would slow down for me.
Well tnx. agn.
Rebecca Rich KB0VVT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dad's comments:
We started the contest at Steve's KM0Ls house to help the K0VBU team. We
were given the initial responsibility to make contacts on the second
radio. When we started the contest the high speed cw was very
intimidating and seemed impossible for both of us to copy. I possibly
made two or three contacts while Rebecca was not able to copy any of the
cw except a few scribbles on paper. At this point, I decided we were
not helping the team so we went home to our own station to see if we
could do better. We only live about three blocks away. Once home
Rebecca managed only three contacts over about an hour's time. The high
speed cw was just too much for us. To make matters worse, 40 meters
was jam packed with nowhere for us to park to begin calling cq at slower
speed.
Sunday, after church, we made a new plan. We set the MFJ memory keyer
to between 15 to 20 wpm and then loaded the necessary information into
the memories. We wanted to use the contest program but it only went
down to 22 wpm. I wanted to start out with something easy and work our
way up. We made up an index card with a big QRS written on it.
We found a nice open spot on 21.030 and began calling cq. When people
were too fast we simply sent QRS. A few people just left refusing to
slow down but most were very courteous and patient. Rebecca would type
the exchange she heard into the logging program while I wrote it down on
paper. She would occasionally glance over at my paper to verify what
she had typed matched what I copied. One feature of the MFJ keyer
automatic serial number was confusing to some operators. The MFJ sends
a "T" for "0" and a "N" for "9". Towards the end of the contest, we
quickly tuned up and down 20 and 40 meters searching for last minute
sections. We thought that was pretty fun! We also noticed that the
high speed code that seemed impossible in the beginning was now becoming
much easier to copy. I did most of the work for the last two or three
contacts since Rebecca was distracted by the Sunday evening Disney TV
show. Overall, Rebecca had a very fine bunch of Amateur radio operators
to work.
Thanks to everyone for making our first cw contest a blast!
Dave Rich KG0US
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/3830faq.html
Submissions: 3830@contesting.com
Administrative requests: 3830-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-3830@contesting.com
|