SPRINT SUMMARY SHEET
Contest Date : 14-Feb-99
Callsign Used : K2UA
Operator : K2UA
Category : Single Operator
Default Exchange : # Rus NY
Name : Rus Healy
Address : 5960 Canadice Hill Road
City/State/Zip : Springwater NY 14560-9643
Team/Club : North Coast Contesters
BAND Raw QSOs Valid QSOs Points Mults
__________________________________________________
80CW 96 96 96 9 -- three-element
parasitic vert array
40CW 83 83 83 24 -- 40-2CD at 96 ft
20CW 20 20 20 8 -- Tribander at 103 ft
__________________________________________________
Totals 199 199 199 41
Final Score = 8159 points.
What an amazing contest! I wasn't able to get on until 0125 because the
household was suffering from a nasty stomach virus. The baby was pretty
much over it, but my wife had spent the whole day balled up on the
couch, so I offered to defer my starting time until the baby was in bed.
In retrospect, I sure wish I hadn't missed that first 105 minutes--this
almost certainly would have been my first over-300-QSO CW Sprint--but
family must come first.
Sure enough, the virus hit me three hours after the contest ended, and I
was up all night worshipping at the porcelain throne. I was the one who
spent Sunday balled up on the couch . . ..
In addition to enjoying the great time I always have in the CW Sprints,
I wanted to shake down some new hardware I've built before the ARRL DX
Contest this coming weekend. I also wanted to get more experience with
TR Log; although I used it in making a few hundred Qs in the NAQP CW and
in the ARRL January VHF Sweepstakes, I lacked comfort using it in
high-rate contests. My new automatic antenna control box and the
accompanying relay box are working great, although it took a good bit of
added bypassing to get all the RF out and keep the computer noise in the
computer. The control box fully incorporates TR's ability to use the
radio A/B, CW, and PTT outputs, the inputs for paddle and foot switch
(which I'm using for radio A/B selection), and, of course, serial-port
radio control. The box also auto-switches band-pass filters. The
automatic antenna selection, filter switching, PTT function and the
parallel-port paddle inputs are the only new features to my station, but
what excellent additions they are!
I did have some frustrations with TR that I need to better understand,
but overall I was quite pleased with the way it played. The worst thing
that happened was when someone asked me for the QSO number I had given
them on another band, and I couldn't figure out how to pull it up!
(Sorry, John!) That's seriously frustrating, coming from someone who has
a long background with CT, in which it's super-easy to look at or edit
anything in the log. I'm sure that after a season of using TR, it'll be
second-nature, but right now it really keeps me on my toes. On the other
hand, I did manage to tweak the logcfg.dat file to do everything I
wanted--before the contest!
Can't wait to see how all this stuff plays in ARRL CW! See you all on
the bands.
Now to go put connectors on the hardline to the new monobanders for 20
and 15 . . ..
--73, Rus, K2UA (ex NJ2L)
__________________________
Rus Healy
Senior Systems Engineer, Microwave Data Systems
Web: http://www.microwavedata.com
Tel +1-716-242-9600
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