CQ 160-Meter Contest, SSB
Call: K5NA
Operator(s): KU5B
Station: K5NA
Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Manor, TX
Operating Time (hrs): 30
Summary:
Total: QSOs = 1047 State/Prov = 56 Countries = 32 Total Score = 224,136
Club: Central Texas DX and Contest Club
Comments:
Thanks once again to Richard and Susan for letting me come play at their
wonderful station and for their gracious hospitality as usual.
I'm lucky enough not to have Friday classes so when the invitation to arrive
Thursday was brought up, I thought that would be a pretty good idea. After
having almost fallen asleep or hearing things that weren't there last year on
the second night I think this is probably the only way for me to seriously give
this a good effort.
I arrived a little after 4pm on Thursday and got settled in. We watched a bit
of the Olympics and I decided to listen a bit on 160 and worked a couple of new
band countries for myself before going to sleep around midnight.
I woke up around 10 Friday morning (extremely well rested) and remembered a
thought I'd had just before going to sleep the night before. I mentioned to
Richard that it would be much easier for me to use the left K3 (I'm left
handed) rather than the right K3 I used last year. This turned out to be a bit
of a task. Richard graciously tore much of his usual SO2R setup apart just for
a stinkin' 160SSB test. We took the laptop that is sometimes used as a server
computer and brought it in the shack for me to use. Luckily Richard had a spare
Rigblaster Plus for me to use to be able to still have voice keying but getting
it set properly took a good bit of time. This change turned out to be much less
tiring on me in that I didn't have to constantly reach across myself to turn the
VFO.
The contest started and the first two hours were abysmal. I had a pretty loud
'egg-frying' noise that was brought under control by the noise blanker but
still hindered me a lot in my ability to hear. K2UR even called the house and I
got relayed a message that I had a huge pileup; I heard nothing but noise.
Things got better as the sun set but I still felt like I had a bunch of people
call that I just couldn't hear. Seems this is the consensus of a couple of the
South Texas op as well as I had both K5NZ and NR5M tell me that either the US
callers were very loud or shockingly weak. I will venture to guess that I
probably lost 30 or 40 Q's to the noise/condx. On the other hand, I felt very
loud. I held down 1847.8 the entire 15 hours. That was cool.
As a consequence of my plentiful sleep, I felt great the entire night...well,
until about 6am or so. I ended with 715Q the first night, just ahead of last
year's first night total. The saving grace this year was much more EU and even
a handful of KH6's (of which I had none last year). I also ended the first
night only needing 3 more states. VE9 eluded me the entire contest but I heard
VE1ZZ very clearly during the first couple of hours.
A hearty breakfast was had and I easily slept from 10am-4pm. When I woke up,
Gary, W5ZL and his wife Leslie had stopped by to talk all things WRTC and get
ready for a W5 FOC dinner next weekend. Once again, a great meal of tacos was
had with all of them before the grind started.
The second night was pretty rough for me. I got on a bit later than I'd hoped
(likely because I wanted some more delicious tacos) and ended up in a couple of
different places during the course of the evening. I wrote last year that I
needed to focus on S&Ping more the second night and this turned out pretty well
for me. I ended up finding DE VERY high in the band and later found DC. During
the course of the evening, I worked a couple of more EU and a good deal of
XE's. NX5M stopped by and asked me what I still needed. I told him I just
needed VT and he told me that KK1L was lurking around that that he'd been
called by him during his run. Well, I wasn't quite sure what to do then so I
just kept CQing and hoping that either I would find it on the second VFO or
he'd call me. Neither happened. Pretty soon after that I got bumped off the QRG
by a EU and went up to 1918 and had a pretty decent US run up there. After
tiring of running so high I went looking for a spot down toward the bottom and
found 1805.75 open and took it. The first person to call me was K1LPS in VT.
That was WAY cool. Much appreciated.
As usual, the second night was pretty slow but was apparently semi-interesting
as I never dozed once.
I quit at 8am, had breakfast, and slept a good 3 hours before making the trip
home. I knew NR5M quit before I did Sunday morning so I suspected that he'd be
on the last hour or half hour. Just as I was getting close to Hempstead I
decided to turn the radio in the car on and have a listen. Sure enough, he was
there CQing endlessly just as I had been from 7-8am. He heard my puny signal
from the mobile so we compared notes. He'd edged me out once again but not by
as much as last year. Thanks for the fun (yet nerve-racking) competition,
George.
I had a very nice time this weekend although I've once again been reminded how
much more I love CW on 160. Richard and Susan's hospitality is great and the
station plays extremely well. I can always count on laughing a whole lot when I
go there. But, I've also still got a lot to learn about the band and the K3
(which, once again, was a saviour in digging out signals). I tried diversity
mode for quite a while and when the signals were loud, was pretty neat to
listen to. But, unfortunately most of the weekend was spent trying to pull one
letter at a time out of the noise.
See y'all next time and give a listen in a couple of weeks (Mar 20/21) as NO5W,
W5ZL, and I go drivin' through Oklahoma.
Colin KU5B
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