Apologies to K5ZD, who does a nice job writing up winning efforts from his
locale. This is a different sort of story from the Left Coast, where it
often ain't easy to win much of anything.
15M Single Op High Power Unassisted
Call Hours Score Q Pts C Z
K6AW 26H:48M 210,483 767 1799 87 30 Operating at N6RO
CQWW approaches and N6RO is on tour; K3EST is operating at K3LR. Kenny,
K2KW (ex-WM2C) and I are slightly burnt out from work and travel, so we
decide to do single band entries from N6RO. I'll do 40, he'll do 15, (his
choice). About three days before the contest Kenny starts murmuring
(whining, really) about how boring 15 will be and how maybe he should do 20
instead. I encourage him, and ask K3EST to do the same. 15 will be
terrible, 20 will be HOT! And, of course, I'm doing 40 which will be another
hot band. Right.
Friday morning I show up at N6RO at 7 a.m. <at Kenny's request> to listen to
15. I power up the FT1000MP and bust a few pile-ups with one call, running
low power -- 3C5A, CT3/DL1CW, 9J2SZ and EA7AGO. On 40 I work XZ1N and C21BH
the same way. Things seem ok to me.
I get to work hooking up the second station -- (my FT990 and AG6D's Amp
Supply LK-500ZC) -- for Kenny to use on 15. I'll use N6RO's FT1000MP and
Alpha 76PA. Noon arrives and so does K2KW. He gets his laptops hooked up
(four computers for two guys with no network -- we're into propagation
programs big time [when you don't have any, you study the hell out of
it...]), and we finalize the decision, he will do 20, not 15. Meanwhile
we're hooking up stubs, bandpass filters, loading the right version of CT to
talk to the 990 <I use TR>, powering everything up to make sure we're ok. I
run to the store for last minute provisions. Somewhere near T-30 minutes I
decide to turn the top 40m antenna <@140'> to the afternoon long path
heading over S. America since I think that may yield some mults during the
first hour of the contest, when it will be too early to knife through "The
Great Wall of Eastern U.S. Working Europe <tm>." A few minutes later I try
turning the antenna for some reason I can't recall now -- and, nothing. We
try everything we can think of. The rotor is a museum-piece grade Kenpro.
Kenny starts wrestling with the control box and manages to short out the
indicator. The antenna is stuck on 150 degrees. It's now T-13 minutes. We
have a short <and meaningless> discussion about who should do which band.
After a few gestures, we settle it -- he will do 20, I'll do 15.
As anyone who has seen or operated N6RO can attest, there are some large
antennas here. It may not compare with KC1XX, but for the West Coast, it's
large. On 15 there's 6 el at 140', 6 el at 100' and 6 el at 60'. The top
two turn, the bottom one is fixed on S. America. Things could be much worse
-- I could be operating at home. After a few minutes of horsing around with
antennas, stubs, and bp filters and getting tuned up, I start in at 0003z.
Friday night is not great. It's pretty slow -- (I should get used to
this...) I run a few JA's, work some S. America, a few Pacific, and the
band starts disappearing around 0330z -- after 4.5 hours I have only 99 Q's
and 17 mults. I kibbutz with the 15m op at K0RF at 0445z, then bug Kenny
for awhile and head for some shut-eye at around 0730z. (One nice thing
about this single band 15m stuff -- you can sleep!!!)
Saturday is ok, but not much EU. Some short runs, but more flurries and
occasional decent S&P'ing for mults. A LOT of JA's get worked -- I'm
worried that there will be none to work on Sunday. (I also notice that the
MASTERDX.DTA file I got from AD1C two days ago is missing about 70% of the
JA's I work. I'll have to send him this log.) The band closes earlier on
Saturday night than it did on Friday. So does 20, so we go out for a fast
Mexican dinner in beautiful, downtown Oakley. I end up Saturday with 546
Q's and set my goal for the contest at only 750, since most JA's will be at
work and won't be back for our Sunday, local time.
Sunday we're up at 1315z and back at it. With the SFI way up I can hear and
work a fair number of OH's, a million EA's, a few G's and the obligatory I
and F stations with little problem. I'm able to bust big pile-ups with one
or two calls every time. Very nice. I catch most of the Africans, and the
odd SA mult, including HC8N <N5KnownOffender.> In the afternoon local we're
watching GeoClock like hawks, checking the gray line to JA -- I'm fretting
because I'm certain I worked them all yesterday. Tokyo sunrise comes and
goes and I've got the top antenna on JA (because of ANOTHER rotor failure,
this time the middle antenna won't come 'round to JA) and nothing much is
happening. Finally, about 15 minutes after JA sunrise, I work JH1QAE. Then
after another seven minutes, another. Then a half hour later I'm working
them in little clumps, for a total of only 42 additional until the end of
the contest. I end the contest with 767 Q's, 87 countries and 30 zones.
Highlights include being called by XU, XV, and the KG4 (wasn't that Sunday
pileup for him on 15 something else?) I hope I haven't short-changed my
fellow team members with this puny score. I never heard or worked any of
them, either.
There were times I thought W9RE was following me around <he probably didn't
even notice me off the back of his beams> -- he and KS9K were hyper-loud all
weekend -- great job from both stations. It was disappointing to read that
while 7Z5OO worked over 1,000 Q's on 15, he never worked or even heard the
West Coast.
For fun on Saturday night I went on 80m for a little while, working 47 Q's,
23 countries and 14 zones using the magic N6RO 80m antenna farm.
A special thanks to Ken, N6RO and Jean for their hospitality and of course
to Ken for the use of his station. K2KW deserves credit for putting up with
my FT1000MP tantrums and my incessant interruptions while he was trying to
run 20m.
Thanks everyone for the Q's -- the new calls made things interesting since
sometimes you had to translate to figure out who was doing well. See you in
the SprINT, NAQP's, Big Sprints and ARRL DX.
73, Steve K6AW
ex-W6EMS
Team Monobanders
Club Affiliation: NCCC
And thanks to K4AAA for encouraging these long-winded write-ups on 3830.
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/3830faq.html
Submissions: 3830@contesting.com
Administrative requests: 3830-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-3830@contesting.com
Sponsored by: Akorn Access, Inc & KM9P
|