North American QSO Party, CW - January
Call: WA7NWL
Operator(s): WA7NWL
Station: WA7NWL
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: AZ
Operating Time (hrs): 1:33
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160:
80:
40: 40 14
20:
15:
10: 1 1
-------------------
Total: 41 15 Total Score = 615
Club: Arizona Outlaws Contest Club
Team: Arizona Outlaws - Renegades
Comments:
One of my most eventful contests ever.....
New antenna installed earlier last week. Worked perfectly on all bands in all
modes; at 100 watts, no RFI, computer logging practice sessions and pre-contest
QSO's were flawless.
THEN -
After the first of only 1 contest contact on 10M, everything locked-up. Nothing
would talk to anything, com ports disappeared, data ports became connected to
something other than what they were supposed to be, N1MM+ display windows
displayed things they shouldn't, radio started transmitting all sorts of random
things and it became a somewhat 'interesting' exercise.
After too many hours of trying and re-trying just about everything I had
available - discussions with RF mentor N7NT resulted in a reminder about
something I knew about but had never run into before.....
To paraphrase multiple articles by much smarter folks than me - 'if it's a
cable, put snap-on ferite cores on both ends of everything'. Doesn't really
matter if it carries RF by design or incidentally. And if they don't really
need cores, it probably won't hurt anything to have them there. Fixed everything
nicely on 20M through 10M (except 10M and 15M were closed by then). And then I
went to 40M - which started popping GFI outlets in the house.
Since it was such a high-scoring contest for me and I just knew that with my
comfortable lead I would be somewhere in the top ranks of the contest, that I
didn't really need 40M, 80M or 160M contacts. So I called it a day (well,
several other things also) and went out for dinner food with my wife.
New standard practice is 'install cores on everything'.
Tnx es 73,
John, WA7NWL
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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