California QSO Party - 2021
Call: W6DMW
Operator(s): W6DMW W6JFA
Station: W6DMW
Class: M/M LP
Class Overlay: CntyExp
QTH: CA
Operating Time (hrs): 17
Summary:
Band CW Qs Ph Qs
--------------------
160:
80: 6
40: 39
20: 5 54
15: 2 65
10: 1
--------------------
Total: 7 165 Mults = 43 Total Score = 15,093
Club: Northern California Contest Club
Comments:
This all started from watching a NCCC meeting presentation about CQP and
Expeditions. W6DMW thought, now this will combine the 2 hobbies into one fun
weekend. So he talked to W6JFA about it and away we went.
After a quick look of which counties our favorite off-roading area encompassed
we found that we could get to an 8,700 or so foot peak in Alpine County. W6JFA
did a quick site visit in August before the forest shut down and we decided the
Mt. Reba peak would be perfect. It has a 2.6 mile "advanced" rated
trail off Highway 4 that starts at the Round Valley Sno-Park. It is filled with
a big mix rocky terrain, loose dirt, and complex switch backs. Perfect for the
adventure factor.
We got out there the Friday, setup, and got on the air for the practice. Only
had one QSO and realized we had an issue with the Flex. It wasn't high SWR as
suspected since our EFHW (inverted L) and Gap Titan were tuned around 2.5 or
better for all bands. We had no clue what the issue was. Restarting the Flex
fixed it for the meantime. We found out the next day that it was the USB
adapter we were using for the footswitch that didn't like all the RF and would
cut out the signal to the laptop. Ooops. We operated with VOX all weekend and
were quite happy with the results.
Event day! We got on late. We both did math wrong and had a 45 minute late
start. Oops.
20 was packed, we were never able to get a foot hold and call CQ. We kept
getting stomped on.
15 was great but we had the same issue. 15 had a fantastic amount of stations
and activity. That was so great to see. Same with all the participants of the
Oceania Contest. That was a fun coincidence.
40 was fantastic and 80 was fun since 80 was the CA stations. While we only got
a few QSOs on 80, there was a lot of fun there. It was neat hearing the
comradery between CA stations.
We didn't hit our goal at all, we didn't even come close. We did have a lot of
fun being up there and on the air. The only real negatives were the cots that
felt like we were sleeping on plywood and how darn cold it got! When things got
draining mentally what kept us going was the few small runs we had and of course
hearing the joy in operators when they would say Thanks for the new Mult!
We have 2 notes to ourselves:
1) this is the last straw, learn CW. We didn't have the planned operator for
CW. We tried CWGet for a moment but it became chaotic and then N1MM crashed.
So we said forget it! We need to learn it for real.
2) Next time we need an AMP. LP took some fun out of it)
73! Thanks for the QSOs and support. We hope to activate Alpine again the
future.
Icom 7100
Flex 6400
Backup radio was a Kenwood TS-430s
MFJ Versa Tuner II (model MFJ-941D)
Gap Titan
all band 53' EFHW inverted L
40M dipole made on the spot to get us some better time on 40
Posted using 3830 Score Submittal Forms at: http://www.3830scores.com/
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