North American QSO Party, SSB - August
Call: WX3B
Operator(s): K3AJ KD4D KE3X N8IVN W3MMM WX3B
Station: WX3B
Class: M/2 LP
QTH: MD
Operating Time (hrs): 12
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 22 13
80: 364 37
40: 656 58
20: 272 41
15: 10 6
10: 0 0
-------------------
Total: 1324 155 Total Score = 205,220
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Team:
Comments:
This was quite an interesting experience, and experience is sometimes what you
get when you get what you don't want!!
First - a hearty thank you to my wife Elizabeth for the 4-star food service for
me and our group!! It was nice to finally meet one of her close friends (Pat)
who also brought her husband Tom over to see what radio-sport is all about.
We had a great team: Lead-off batter Ken KE3X brought some radios over to WX3B
to be looked at (congratulations on your upgrade, Ken), and Jay W3MMM was also
in the chair at the starting gun. When I advertised to Ken that he had 20
meters, the "harder" of the two bands, he figured it was because he'd
have a big pileup to manage. What was actually HARD, was that he couldn't run
anyone very well, and even pounces were being somewhat ignored...at first.
Evidently there was a solar disturbance that correlated with this contest. Hats
off to those of you that had higher antennas and succeed on 20 meters -
particularly Todd, WB2ZAB who simply waded into 20 meters and ran almost 300
stations in 3 hours, no problem.
Jay got started on 40 and it was productive. He diverted to 15 to capture the
hard-earned multipliers he did, then back to 40 he went. Mark KD4D placed
himself in the chair then Dennis N8IVN arrived and gave W3MMM a break. Our
condolences to Dennis who lost a very close fur friend earlier in the day.
Well 20 did get better as the contest sent on, however we never got anything
going on 15, and we were too scared to try 10 with the flat band-scope (no
signals). So, 10 & 15 were pretty much a wash.
Think things can't get worse? How about a THUNDERSTORM??? Lights-out at WX3B
for 20 minutes as one lightning bolt was too close for comfort. After that
short-lived break, things have to get better, right??? WRONG. How about some
RAIN STATIC? S9 on all bands? Sure!! Heavy duty cycle (no way to hear between
the crashes)? YES!!! That went on for about 60 - 90 minutes. If you thought
we were deaf, my apology, we were!
Ahhh...but 40 meters was in decent shape once the noise stopped, and it sounded
like 80 was going to cooperate. Alas, the thunderstorm static stuck around and
we had 20db static crashes on 80 & 160 for much of the contest.
Tom K3AJ arrived just in time to enjoy dinner, and Mark KD4D and Tom K3AJ
quickly formed the expert clean-up tag-team on the bands, passing stations back
and forth (when my network was cooperating). Oh yes, we had internet outages,
and even local area network outages that were eventually fixed but never was the
cause identified. Tom even went back home (as Dennis did), and put some more
time in as single-ops! That's dedication!!
There were some real highlights in this event, 3 of them were the Icom IC-7610's
that Ray Novak of Icom lent to team WX3B. This was the first multi-operator
CONTEST event we tried them in and they worked extremely well. Being that we
had horrendous noise all night, the noise reduction was truly appreciated and
utilized. We got several unsolicited reports of excellent transmit audio, a
report I always appreciate.
Another highlight for me was watching Mark KD4D operate, the sheer joy and
precision of his operating is a delight to watch. This guy LOVES contesting,
even when things aren't going well. Mark - I promise to have ALL the function
keys programmed for voice keying (and the S&P ones cleared) next time. We
did get better at PASSING everyone back and forth, a strategy that worked well
from time to time.
Tom K3AJ departed at midnight and Mark and I kept at it until the end. That
last hour was S-L-O-W!!
One of these NAQPs I am going to break 2,000 SSB QSOs - however this one was not
to be.
This particular event was bittersweet for me personally. My first contesting
mentor and Multi/Multi station owner Bob Morris W4MYA became a silent key
earlier this week. Many of us all throughout the USA were using Bob's name or
"Dude" in his honor. Bob was a warm-hearted contesting loving man who
enjoyed showing new folks the ropes...he got me hooked. I am going to miss that
southern voice telling me to RUN EM!!
The NAQP club competition kept us going...and it looks like SMC may have ran
away with it again this year. The club competition is excellent because it gets
many more folks active for NAQP. Just wait until NEXT YEAR's RE-MATCH!!
My best wishes to everyone - I am looking forward to the DX contesting season!
73,
Jim Nitzberg WX3B
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