North American QSO Party, SSB - August
Call: W4AN
Operator(s): W1BO
Station: W4AN
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: AL
Operating Time (hrs): 8
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 0 0
80: 0 0
40: 185 37
20: 37 22
15: 0 0
10: 0 0
-------------------
Total: 222 59 Total Score = 13,320
Club: South East Contest Club
Team: SECC #1
Comments:
FT-950 â?" Windom at 50 ft, 80m Dipole (defunct) 100 watts â?" Great fun!
Started out on time and was working 20 meters and found that even calling CQ
over and over I got very few, so made few quick S&P Runs to pick up the few
that I did get â?" Although there was a plethora of DX stations but none of the
usual suspects were playing along with this one apparently. Went up to 15 meters
and called for a while and didnâ??t even get one reply â?" once again heard all
the DX in the world but nothing US. So I decided to take one of my breaks a lot
earlier than I had planned just out of pure frustration. After a quick bite to
eat and taking care of a few things came back in started back on 20 meters and
still nothing, so I went ahead and started running SO2V working about 5 mins on
40 and 5 mins on 20 after a while 40 meters started picking up a little so I
moved to a good clear freq down in the general portions and took to calling CQ,
after a while I absolutely could not believe what happened I went on a run that
just wouldnâ??t stop! This lasted for a good while I know that at one point my
rate was going at 144/hr which I wish it would have just kept going like that
that for the rest of the night. Had to move frequency a few times because of
interference and gave up a GREAT frequency to KB4KBS to run on with his SE for
Abby, Scott I hope that I got it good and warmed up for you (now that I went
back and looked someone had spotted me there so that gave you an advantage for
those who used clusters). I hope that you did great with it!
Well about 0300z I decided it was time to start looking at moving down to 80
meters since I was running a really low rate on 40 by this point so I went
ahead and moved over to the 80 meter antenna. Apparently this was where Mr.
Murphy decided that he wanted to interject himself into the event for me. I
couldnâ??t get the antenna to tune up for nothing. I pulled out the analyzer
and looked it over a few times trying to figure out what was wrong with it and
couldnâ??t figure it out to save my life everything looked great on the
analyzer but as soon as I hooked it up to the rig the SWR was high and
wouldnâ??t tune and I wasnâ??t comfortable enough to run the antenna with a
mismatch like I had. Well I went ahead and moved back down to 40 meters started
calling CQ again since all the guys I found on S&P I had already worked before.
And then the battle of the nets was horrible. My poor youngest decided he
wanted to sit with daddy and listen for a bit about this time and when he did
the poor guy knocked my drink over on my keyboard on accident â?" for those of
you who donâ??t know Mt. Dew is bad for keyboards so I tried to make a quick
swap over to another keyboard but by this point my son had already convinced me
that it was time to go lay down and watch a movie so I am taking an alibi on
this one and admitting that I was a sucker and went and watched a movie with
him how can you not when he tells you out of the blue â??Daddy, you are the
greatest daddy!â?? and coming from a 4 year old out of the blue that means a
lot, so I had to do the right thing and go be a great daddy. (my intent was to
wait till he fell asleep then get back on for the rest of the contest but when I
woke up at 6am this morning I figured it was a little late for that idea)
But a great time all and all, the conditions early on were amazing â?" wish
they were that good for the WAE contest for sure thought about taking a quick
break from the contest to work VU2KP who was booming in across the pole but
decided against it. A few lessons learned out of this one for myself and maybe
some others in the same situation, I was using my IF-2000 with a Softrock as my
pan adapter very early on in the contest but due to the way I configure the
system was unable to send the CAT commands to the FT-950 to key the DV-6 voice
triggers so I was a little disappointed when I had to give up the pan adapter
and go back to the regular way of operating. (Think I am just going to have to
trade in for the DMU-2000 instead) or maybe even trade my FT-950 and FT-897 in
for an FT-2000 with the DMU2000 so I can run true SO2V (which really does
nothing more than allow me to jump bands really quickly and not have to
configure everything each time I do). I should have probably made more use of
my beam than I did as well. Also there were a MANY number of stations that I
know were not running 100 watts which was really frustrating to such a point
that I even went back and told one of them that he was splattering 3khz + and
â?" (only cause I knew he was coving one of my SECC brethren), But all and all
looking forward to working you all in the WAE Phone.
Jeremy
W1BO (W4AN)
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.hornucopia.com/3830score/
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