ARRL Sweepstakes - SSB
Call: WB1GQR
Operator(s): W1SJ
Station: WB1GQR/W1SJ
Class: Unlimited
Section: VT
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Summary:
Band QSOs
----------------
80 422
40 291
20 356
15 109
10 497
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Total 1675 x 2 x 80 multipliers = 268,000
Club: Radio Amateurs of Northern Vermont
Equipment:
TS-830S + MLA 2500B
A4 at 50', 80M Zepp at 65'.
40M Delta Loop
Comments:
Just like last year, I started like a house on fire with great rates. It
promised to be banner year.
A couple of big hours on 10 gave way to a big hour on 20 and all was
looking great!
At around 0030 I heard a "thunk" in the amp and found that the station I
was working could not
hear me. A quick check showed that the amp was completely out of tune, and
worse yet, the
SWR was fairly close to infinite. Since I was planning to jump down to 80
at 0100, I simply
moved earlier. Things went downhill from here. In retrospect, I should
have continued on 20
with the 40 meter loop, which tested out reasonably well on 20. Instead I
was really an hour or
so too early on 80 and suffered through some very mediocre hours where I
should have seen
100+ hours. With all 5 bands open, the number of people on 80 was way down,
and it showed in the rates. I eventually had to go to 40, something I
rarely do in the evening! (It wasn't too bad!). Later, 80 started doing
better as everyone moved down from 10, 15 and 20.
Instead of sleeping during the time off, I elected to go for a lovely tower
climb at 4:30 AM. I saw
about 300 ohms across the yagi feedline where it should be open. This led
me to believe I had a feedline problem. It was pitch black out, so I bathed
the tower in 1000 watts of work lights. While I was up there, I heard
coughing and rustling from neighbors on both sides of me. Did they all
wake up to watch me on the tower? Were they nuttier that I was? Probably
not. They were undoubtedly attempting to watch the meteor shower when I
popped in and blacked out the show with my lights!
When I opened up the connector to the RF choke, the smell of burnt bakelite
permeated the air and told me exactly what happened. The connector arced
over and the insulated turned into a resistor-- or semiconductor, so
something that it shouldn't have been. I quickly ran another feedline up
the tower and caught 90 minutes of sleep.
I had great optimism that Sunday would be better. For two hours it looked
that way. Then, as all the bands opened up, the rates dropped through the
bottom and it was a long day slugging it out. I gave up trying to switch
bands looking for rates and stayed put on 10 for a while amassing some head
banging 45-50/hour rates. In the late afternoon, 15 and 10 finally started
to produce better rates. It is so frustrating when the bands are in such
great shape but the contacts are simply not there -- At least from the East
Coast.
After 25 years, I tried a new category - Unlimited. While watching the
spots was interesting (I saw dozens of KL7's spotted on 6 meters), it
helped me very little. Only one mult was picked up from the network, and I
worked several of them later anyway. I still had to go out and find my own
VY1!
I hate to say this, but after the ratty Sunday rates the last few years, I
can't wait for the sunspots to drop to get some better scores again!
Mitch W1SJ
Mitch Stern
w1sj@arrl.net
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