North American QSO Party, SSB - August
Call: W7RN
Operator(s): W9KKN
Station: W9KKN
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: Reno, NV
Operating Time (hrs): 9:55
Radios: SO2R
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 17 5
80: 75 22
40: 150 36
20: 420 52
15: 1 1
10: 1 1
-------------------
Total: 664 117 Total Score = 77,688
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Team: NCCC#1 - Woodstock50
Comments:
First of all, thanks to Tom (and of course Midge) for letting me try out W7RN
for a change of scenery! What an awesome station!
I was a little exhausted coming into this, being in Vegas all week for work,
then driving to Reno. But I also needed to conserve energy while operating,
because as soon as I was done, I needed to drive back home immediately, then hop
on a plane to W9 a few hours later, so apologies for the delay in getting this
posted.
As for the actual operation:
Total gut check. I mean, on one hand, the station, in this case, was definitely
better than the operator, so no excuses there, but between the altitude and the
condx, I didn't quite hold up as well as I thought I could have. I was able to
make walk the bands with K2RD (thanks Ira!), but if you can't work anything else
on 15m with a 24 element stacked flamethrower at your disposal, in the middle of
the summer, nobody can. Contestonlinescore.net and other 3830 results
corroborate the experience. Good grief.
20m was weird, too -- everyone just kind of weak, very heavy QSB, etc, and then
the low bands. I should have concentrated more on 40m, but my ears are still
bleeding from the extreme QRN on the low bands, many QSOs made with pure ESP. I
don't even want to see the log check report. I structured my breaks thinking
that I would be able to make up some lost ground on the low bands given the
lackluster high bands and a relatively low Ap/Kp index, but instead I worked a
bunch of lightning storms.
Hopefully, I can try this again in winter or something and may conditions
improve.
Aside from all of that though, I had a good time operating (as I always do) --
it's a cool station, lots of cool tech, and I'm happy to be helping Tom work on
the network quality for the remote operators (part of the mission in going there
in the first place.) Excellent practice for WWSSB in the fall - my pileup
management and SSB technique is coming along. Lots of good advice from the best
of the best elmers N6RO, K3EST, N6WM, N6KT, N6MJ, N6WIN, etc., Thanks!
Thanks for all the Q's everyone! You know I'll see you in the next contest.
--Bill/W9KKN @ W7RN
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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