North American QSO Party, SSB - August
Call: W4PK
Operator(s): W4PK
Station: W4PK
Class: M/2 LP
QTH: VA
Operating Time (hrs): 4:32
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160:
80: 37 13
40: 45 22
20: 28 16
15:
10:
-------------------
Total: 110 51 Total Score = 5,610
Club: Potomac Valley Radio Club
Team:
Comments:
What can I say? I am set up for SO2R and for a change I thought I would give it
a try on this mode. But I was really mistaken!
I first started out on 10 & 15M calling CQ sequentially on each band but
there was absolutely no propagation anywhere on either band. After about 15
minutes of this I gave up and went to 20 and 40M and started searching and
pouncing on both bands. But I was soon told that I had terrible audio on the
20M band, which is my K3. So I spent the next few hours trying to figure out
what I had not set up right. I finally solved it by disabling my computer's
speaker output (even though I had its volume control set to zero). Everything
returned to normal once I did this.
The next problem I had was that my response text to give my name and state was
rather "longish" and when I tried to re-record it
"on-the-fly" (N1MM+ ctrl-shift-fcn key) to a shorter version I ended
up with "nothing". After trying to do this several times I gave up
and restored that function key (F2) wav file using last week's Windows 7
backup.
The only successful run I had was on 80M but after 19 Q's my voice completely
gave out! And this was using canned fcn-key messages where I only spoke the
caller's call sign! I can see where running is the only way to go if you want
to achieve rate, but I just cannot do that on SSB! After the 10/15M debacle I
never did try to alternate CQing on two bands again. Did I mention that SSB is
my least favorite mode?
Propagation was long and fading on both 20 & 40M. 80M was much better and I
was able to work many of the PVRC folks on this band. I did listen to 160M some
but I did not hear anyone. Overall the QRN made copying difficult on all bands.
Thanks to all who put up with my rather longish canned messages.
73, Sam W4PK
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