ARRL Sweepstakes Contest, CW
Call: K1EP
Operator(s): K1EP
Station: K1EP/2
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Central Park, N
Operating Time (hrs): 1
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
160:
80:
40: 52
20:
15:
10:
------------
Total: 52 Sections = 30 Total Score = 3,120
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Comments:
For the CW SS, I am usually visiting NYC for the NYC Marathon. I get my
contesting fix by operating a few hours from my car parked in Central Park.
That presents all sorts of challenges, like trying to fit operating time in
with the Marathon weekend schedule, operating HF from a car, as well as
operating and powering a computer with no paddle from the front seat of a car.
Having operated in this situation a few times before and in other mobile
environments, I thought I had anticipated every problem that could occur. One
problem over the last two or three years has been that my latest laptop has
been power hungry. It can't run on a battery for more than about 45 minutes
and the charger takes about 120W to run when charging. That's a lot for an
inverter to handle. In the past, I had problems with the inverter shutting
down and with creating a tremendous amount of RF hash. I attacked the problem
last spring for the NEQP. With a lot of filters and ferrites, the noise was
hardly noticeable. But this fall at a flea market, I decided to find a small
low power laptop just for mobile contesting. I found one that not only was low
power, it had a second battery, a parallel port and a serial port -- perfect for
DOS contesting. I set up a dual partition and loaded up DOS to run CT and
tested everything out the week before the contest. There was a problem with
the LPT port and I had to go into the BIOS and make sure that it was set
properly. After that, everything played well.
Saturday afternoon came and I had planned on operating for three or four hours
in the evening and then a couple of hours early Sunday morning before the
Marathon. As I setup Saturday, I thought I was behind schedule figuring the
usual 4PM start. I forgot about the time change thing, but the contest was in
full swing by the time I turned on the radio. Everything was hooked up and I
went to test the CW keying. I got nothing when I pushed the F keys. Sometimes
the 1/4" jack in the 706MkIIG doesn't seat properly, so I reseated the plug.
Then the radio keyed continuously! Hmmm, now what? The jack in the radio
seemed loose and as I wiggled it back and forth, the radio would key. I
figured that the solder connection to the PC board broke, so I took the cover
off of the radio only to discover that apparently that was the case. I didn't
have a soldering iron and all the twisting and crimping didn't seem to make a
difference, the radio keyed continuously. At that time, I started getting
phone calls from other Marathon friends and volunteers to go to dinner, so I
decided it wasn't my weekend for contesting. I shut everything down and went
to dinner. I kept thinking about it all night and when I woke up early Sunday
morning, it dawned on me that maybe it really wasn't the connector, but it was
that LPT port on the PC again. So I headed out to the car (a little later than
I had intended) and reconfigured the LPT port in the BIOS and everything worked
again! I could contest! Somehow the LPT configuration was lost (maybe a weak
backup battery) or booting to Win2K changed something. I only had about an
hour and a half before I had to leave, so I did a little S&P on 40 and then
tried to run. The band sounded great, I wish I had more time. My first QSO
was SF. Now, SF always used to be a tough one for me. I also worked other
tough sections, such as UT, SD, PAC, and MAR. I doubt whether I could have
made a sweep, but I think I could have had a much better score if I had things
working Saturday night. I did work some QRP stations as well as 30 sections in
an hour without trying too hard. If I figured out the LPT sooner, I would have
a much larger score but would have missed missed dinner! We went to Joe
Shanghai's in Chinatown, a place not to miss when in NYC.
Thanks for all the Qs and sorry I sometimes had trouble giving fills, as I
didn't have a paddle. I finally learned where all the SS shortcuts were
though.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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