Makrothen RTTY Contest
Call: W9KKN
Operator(s): W9KKN
Station: NW6P
Class: SO/Multi Xcvr HP
QTH: CM87
Operating Time (hrs): 16.5
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs
------------
80: 40
40: 147
20: 238
15: 49
10:
------------
Total: 474 Total Score = 2,076,172
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
As always, special thanks to Tom/NW6P for the use of his station, and
willingness to let me work on it :)
This was my first attempt at the Makrothen contest. I had heard several people
speak highly of it in previous years, but being the weekend after CQP, which is
a pretty big production for WVARA, I was normally inclined to take a break. Bad
idea; Makrothen is seriously a lot of fun. It's got two things that I really
like: one is that it has breaks, which is an opportunity to sleep and catch up
with the XYL, and two, kind of like the Stew, the scoring is based on distance,
which is a lot more fair for the west coast IMO. I'd love to see more contests
do this, and I'd also really enjoy SSB and CW versions of Makrothen, too.
Earlier this week, K7NV/XE2K were over at NW6P and did a fantanstic job of
installing a new 2x8 switch (replacing a 1x8) and rotor/controller at the shack
-- this is one of the first of a few steps to upgrade the station to SO2R
capability. I started the contest off trying to integrate the RemoteQTH band
decoders that I had purchased for this purpose, but unfortunately, I burned the
first several hours of the first session on that, eventually giving up and using
allegator clips to drive the relays, only at 0638Z. There were a lot of unknowns
when it came to coupling between the antennas, and I've spent a lot of time
'between QSOs' this weekend minding/measuring the power and adjusting
filters/stubs working it out as well as rereading my copy of W2JVN's book. Most
of the issues are where I expected them to be and there were relatively few
surprises, but it's still a work in progress. It looks like I'll have to come up
with some way of switching stubs in and out -- Station building/integration can
almost be as much fun as operating!
Once I finally did get going though, I was able to make up some headway despite
what appeared to be low participation in the contest. The openings to EU were
fairly short lived and pretty weak, and JA didn't quite make the showing that I
wished they had, but that's ok, I'm glad I was able to play in this one.
Until next time and thanks for the Q's everyone...
--Bill/W9KKN
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