California QSO Party
Call: NI6T
Operator(s): NI6T, K9YC, K6RM, NO6X, N6RNO
Station: NI6T
Class: M/MCntyExp HP
QTH: Tehama Co
Operating Time (hrs): 29
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
160: 0 0
80: 158 154
40: 389 151
20: 523 445
15: 244 261
10: 0 0
6: 0 0
2: 0 0
--------------------
Total: 1314 1011 Mults = 58 Total Score = 345,564
Club: Redwood DX Association
Comments:
This was a Multi-2 effort at the same excellent QTH that N6RNO found
several years ago. Murphy struck again and again, but the team prevailed
and had a great time. The first strike was to N3ZZ, whose back problems
prevented him from joining us on-site. His K3, generator, and computer
were there as spares, and both K6SRZ and NI6T, shut out by stupid, lazy,
ignorant, bureaucrats at Treasure Island, stepped up to join us.
Murphy's second strike was the failure during setup of the generator in
Rhino's mobile ark -- for some reason, Rhino seemed to have expected
that the failure one hour after shutdown last year would be miraculously
fixed during the 12 intervening months. That left us with the two Hondas
from N3ZZ and K6RM. Both performed flawlessly. The generator in the ark
was repaired and worked for a while, but overheated after about 24 hours
continuous operation, and again shut down.
Murphy's third strike was to K9YC's brain -- he failed to bring the
Molex power cable for his Ten Tec Hercules II amp (found this morning
hiding behind another piece of gear on the shelf behind where the amp
was stored). K6SRZ solved that one when he arrived with ACOM 1010 amp in
his trunk. That gave us two stations with 500W amps (including K6MI's
Yaesu FL7000), but not the third station we had hoped for when we
invited him to join us. That left us with more operators than we needed,
so Alan hung in Friday to help with rigging antennas, but returned home
to work CQP at home (and watch the Giants). Most important, he loaned us
his 1010 to get the second station at full power. In exchange, he
extracted from us the promise to contribute our points to REDXA. In view
of his on-site work and that loan, we agreed.
Murphy still wasn't finished with us. Strike four (thankfully this
wasn't baseball) was to NO6X's rotor, which for one reason or another
didn't work at all. We managed to get it to 70 degrees, but we couldn't
move it to favor DX. And if that wasn't enough, Murphy managed to get
K6MI's beam on the tower pointing at Hawaii. We made a bunch of east
coast CW Qs on 20M before John came into the tent to tell us he had
found and corrected that.
Strike 6 was to K6MI's vehicle -- it wouldn't start, so he was several
hours late for setup, arriving Friday after an 8 hour drive from Fresno
with just enough daylight to get his big tribander on his crankup tower
trailer. Strike 7 was to NO6X, who was missing a few pieces of vital
antenna hardware that kept it on the ground until Saturday morning.
Murphy met his match in Team Tehama -- the most he could do to us was a
29 minute late start (the generator and antenna issues), and some lost
minutes (and sleep) switching generators (and attempting to repair
Rhino's) in the middle of the night.
A great time was had by all, with decent weather, cooler than predicted,
a gorgeous sky Friday night (who had time to look on Saturday night),
John's great cooking, and good operating time from stations that
performed very well. The only important difference from last year's
setup was to increase separation of the two tri-banders from about 110
ft to about 145 ft, which reduced the interstation QRM when we had both
CW and SSB running on the same band. As a result, we were able to run
the two K3s at 500 watts both on 20 at the same time, and both on 15 at
the same time. Yes, there was some phase noise, but it was in the S5-6
range, so it only mattered on weak signals.
Another useful thing learned. Over the winter, I had mounted some big
Delta line filters in electrical boxes, and put one of them at the
output of one of the Hondas. K6RM had built up a ferrite choke line
filter, and had it in series with his Honda. We were hearing S5/6 noise
on 15M, so I went poking around for it. Killed everything in the ark,
and it was still there. Next I wound three turns of the AC cable from
the other Honda (the one with one of my Delta line filters) through a
#31 big clamp-on, and the noise dropped, but not enough. I added a
second one (in series) and the S-meter was down to S1. Bottom line --
the noise coming out of these generators is common mode on all three
conductors, so we need a simple common mode ferrite choke around all
three conductors. An ordinary commercial line filter, even a very good
one, is ineffective!
Yet another strike from Murphy -- for some yet unknown reason, N1MM lost
track of serial numbers between the two stations and started over at 1
with station two at a bit past 1,000 QSOs. It happened after power was
lost for the wireless router. Lost a half hour trying to fix it
(unsucessfully), then went ahead starting from 1. That was Saturday
night, about the time we were starting on 80M, and we got lots of NR?
queries from stations who had worked us on other bands. After power was
lost again briefly Sunday morning, station 2 went back to yet another a
serial number sequence, picking up with something like 870. Thankfully,
log checking only checks that the other station copies what you sent,
not that your numbers are not duplicative. Dunno if that's an N1MM issue, or if
it's a K9YC brain cramp during N1MM setup. :)
Thanks to all the teams, and to all the home station participants for a
great event. W0BH, N5RZ, K4BAI, and KU8E, all of whom had put forth
serious mobile efforts for TXQP, TNQP, and others, were on hand for our
event as well. Much appreciated.
73, Jim K9YC
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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