North American QSO Party, SSB - August
Call: NJ8J
Operator(s): NJ8J
Station: NJ8J
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: GA
Operating Time (hrs): 9:34
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 1 1
80: 57 21
40: 114 38
20: 25 14
15: 37 6
10:
-------------------
Total: 234 80 Total Score = 18,720
Club: South East Contest Club
Team: SECC
Comments:
Equipment:
Alinco DX-77T
LDG AT-11MP Automatic Antenna tuner
Antennas:
100' OCF Dipole fed with ladder-line
Logger: N1MM
Probably my best August NAQP SSB, mainly because I haven't done that
many of them. I didn't realize how many I had missed until I looked it
up to compare. Still far from my Jan NAQP SSB 2001 entry, and not
nearly as fun as the recent NAQP CW.
Never heard anything on 10. 15 and 20 weren't that great. Main
difference between 15 and 20 was that on 15 you could hear plenty of
loud signals (just not enough of them), while on 20 just about everyone
was down in the mud. The contest didn't become fun until I dropped down
to 40. I had rates above 60 on the initial sweep through 40, and even
managed to run for a short while. Ditto on 80. 80 seemed to die in the
last hour. I wasted a half hour in the last hour on 80 when I should
have jumped back to 40.
Did this with the rig's standard hand mike, which means a lot of setting
it down to type on the keyboard and picking it back up to transmit,
which can get clumsy at times. At one point, I thought W100AW/4 had
taken my run frequency on 40. Realized shortly after that apparently I
had accidently hit the UP button on the hand mike, moving me up 100Khz
and right onto *his* frequency. Managed to work him, though I had to ask
for his call (which must have been amusing). After that I made sure
that I didn't leave the select marker in the 100KHz position. I've got
a headset/mike with a foot-pedal switch, but the cable has a break in
it. I need to fix that before my next serious SSB
contest.
Around 2130Z I started getting an S9 noise level. That's dinner time,
so I figured it was probably a neighbor running a mixer or something
similar while making dinner. I took a break at that point, and was out
a bit long, which is why I didn't quite make it to 10 hours.
Ben
--
Ben Coleman nj8j at benshome.net
"I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the
same manner that fish follow migrating caribou."
Paul Tomblin
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