ARRL 160-Meter Contest
Call: W4PA
Operator(s): W4PA
Station: W4PA
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: TN
Operating Time (hrs): 6
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 109 Sections = 37 Countries = 0 Total Score = 8,066
Club: Tennessee Contest Group
Comments:
Rig: Ten-Tec Orion beta unit, Centurion amp, 80 meter Windom at 30
feet fed through a Ten-Tec 238 tuner.
Ugh. Note to self, when you want to get on and casually operate a contest,
and you know the shack is a total wreck, start working on it earlier than
9 pm Friday night after the contest is already under way.
Between ice loading breaking the support rope for my 160 inverted L and
having dismantled the radio room before taking a bunch of my gear to PJ2T
for CQ WW CW, I underestimated how much work it was going to be to get
on the air from home again. Got home Friday night from work late (after 7 pm,
blah, but not atypical these days), no hope for fixing the L. 30 degrees
outside, pitch black dark, and Mary was going out to dinner with friends,
leaving me on babysitting duty for Cecilia. She got back at 9, I went upstairs
to dig a trail through the waste in the radio room to the tables.
It took nearly two hours from the time I walked through the door of the shack to
when I made my first QSO, and I was working on getting on the air that entire
time (!)
The Orion is one fabulous radio. I spent a lot of time just listening to the
contest and tweaking knobs. While I've been using it since September, this
was the first CW contest that I'd had a chance with it. Much of the test
time I've had with it has been during the daytime on weekdays with only the
occasional weekend. The filtering for separating the weak from the loud is
just incredible. On Sunday night at 0530Z I was listening to W4MYA at S9+25
to +30 dB calling CQ on 1.829.78 and K1KD at about S1 at 1.829.48. With
a 200 Hz filter, listening to K1KD, you wouldn't have known anything else
was even on the band. The separation is amazing. The noise reduction is
amazing. Programmable AGC...the sound of the receiver...anyway, yeah,
(disclaimer: I work for Ten-Tec) it is great to see how much went into this rig
finally come to its complete potential and really bummed out now that I didn't
take it to Curacao with me for CQ WW CW!
GL to everyone in the 10 meter contest next weekend.
Scott W4PA
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