North American QSO Party, CW - January
Call: N9SE
Operator(s): N9SE
Station: N9SE
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: IN
Operating Time (hrs): 10
Summary:
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
160: 162 37
80: 316 47
40: 238 49
20: 75 20
15: 33 13
10:
-------------------
Total: 824 166 Total Score = 136,784
Club: Society of Midwest Contesters
Team: SMC Team Hotel
Comments:
Rig :
TenTec Omni VII
Antennas :
Tennadyne T12.10-30HD, 70ft
40M rotatable dipole, 80ft
80M/160M Inverted-L, 65ft
Soapbox :
Saturday was the first full day of being out of bed after being down with the
stomach flu, so it was rough going after a few hours. By around 9PM I felt like
I had forgotten how to copy code. Fortunately, that was short lived and I got my
second wind to make it to the end.
Then there was the problem of a radio to use. Since the Elecraft K4 has not yet
arrived and my Omni VI+ is in the shop, the only other rig on hand with narrow
filters was an FT-990, which worked okay until it's ancient serial port caused
N1MM to lock up, forcing a reboot. In the process of resolving that problem,
(and blowing my rate during that hour), another problem with the radio occurred.
After calling CQ for several minutes, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a
run started, then I noticed that I was putting out zero power. Appears to be
some relay issue in the radio.
The only radio left worth running was an Omni VII on loan from a friend, but the
optional Collins CW filters are not installed, only the stock SSB filter. The
DSP filtering actually performed better than I expected, but the stock setup was
just no match against the strong adjacent signals in the passband, so I had to
move around a lot and/or (re)learn how to decipher callsigns with the AGC
pumping. The static crashes were also problematic on the low bands.
I really enjoyed watching the competition on the online scoreboard. It kept me
in the chair when I felt like going back to bed. It was fun trading places back
and forth with ND9G, WB0SND, WT9U, K9GS, K9NR and others. For example, at one
point I thought I had left ND9G in the dust and then there he came out of
nowhere, hot on my heels! It's funny how running neck and neck with someone
makes my keyer speed creep higher and higher.
In contrast with the terrible start, all was well in the end. The last hour and
a half was great. The static crashes abated and I thoroughly enjoyed the
legendary Ten-Tec QSK during a great run on 80 and 160.
Operating while under the weather, as many others have posted in the past, means
I was not at the top of my game and I hate to think how many busted calls are in
this log. Oh well, there's always next time....hopefully with a new radio.
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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