While operating at W5WMU this weekend was sure a surprise and
I am very pleased with the result, it actually isn't my best
QRP story. I'll tell the WMU story afterwards.
I think it was Field Day in 1979, there was a 2A battery operation
in the Malibu mountains with the call N6VI. This was when Marty Woll
and Wayne Overbeck, N6NB, had those neato tower trailers and they
had nice monobanders on a mountain top.
I wasn't able to be there for the whole weekend, but I agreed
to come do the night shift, from midnight until 6 AM. Finding
a FD site during the night time can be a challenge, but I think
I made it just before it got totally dark.
I sat down in front of some kind of Japanese radio - the kind they
sell in Japan that only runs 5 watts. It was on 20 meters and
N6NB settled down to get some sleep in the cabin of his motor home
(the same one you see on the cover of QST when he did an EME effort
on the Nevada/Utah state line or something like that).
What happened in the next six hours is hard for me to believe, even
today, but I was able to run on both 20 SSB and CW like I was running
a KW. I actually could CLEAR A FREQUENCY on 20 meter phone by CQing.
This is something I am not sure I have ever done since.
I was convinced there had to be an amplifier somewhere, but I operated
the whole period on one battery. I QSYed to CW for awhile and then
came back to phone. I remember having something like 530 QSOs in
that six hour period. I think my best hour was in the 130s.
One of those magic moments I'll never forget. Wayne now has a fine
station on another mountain top, and N6MU beat me in a phone SS when
I did QRP from home five years ago.
As far as what happened this weekend, I was determined to not make
myself any weaker than I had to. I was going to aggressively CQ
with one radio for the whole contest - and S&P with the other.
At the start, I was very lucky to have good conditions on 10 meters.
Most big guns would have started on 15, but I knew the higher in
frequency I could be, the easier it would be for me to attract
attention. I didn't need to be working the whole country either,
I just needed propagation somewhere - anywhere where there were
stations.
The first hour netted me 83 QSOs - with 60 CQs answered on 10 meters
and 23 QSOs on 15 with the second radio. I pretty much stayed on
10 with the CQ radio for the first two hours - switching to 15 at
22:47. During that time on 10, I was getting good results to the
west coast and the northeast. Begin able to have 4/4 to the NE and
4/4 to the NW at the same time was very useful.
15 picked up pretty much where 10 left off. I spent some time with
the second radio picking off the loud guys who were CQing on 10.
By switching the run radio and second radio, it was like starting
the contest all over again. My second hour was 74 and the third
hour was 67 - 224 QSOs and I hadn't touched 20 meters yet.
The second radio moved to 20 at 0012Z where it made its 71st QSO.
The rate on 15 was still good - I had 39 QSOs in the 00Z hour and
35 there in the 01Z - all CQing.
When 15 started slowing down - I made a good decision and avoided
trying to CQ on 20 meters. One of the things I have learned about
W5WMU is to never underestimate what you can do on 40 meters. One
year, my 20 meter coax fried in the first 10 minutes, and I went to
40 after a 30 minute break. The result? Over 1000 QSOs on 40 and
my second victory. I held my breath, and moved the CQ radio down
to 40 meters and found a clear spot down in the bottom 10 kHz of
the band.
Would anyone hear me? Would that 40 meter beam that was twisted
by Lili do the job?
Oh yeah.
My 02Z hour was 72 - with 61 QSOs on 40 meters and 9 second radio
QSOs on 20. In the 03Z hour, I moved the second radio down to 80
and chased the W9s (to whom I hadn't had much of a chance to work
yet and they were having a very tough time with the aurora).
I think the aurora really helped me - as the transcontinental signals
were down and I was far enough south to have a direct path to both
coasts.
03Z netted 42 QSOs on 40 and 36 for each of the two hours after that.
I felt like I lost focus some and took a break in the 06Z hour,
which had only 17 QSOs in it. Getting back on 40 resulted
hours of 46 and 38 (with about a quarter of those coming from
the second radio on 80). I went to bed at 0900Z with 674 QSOs
in the log - pretty much where I had hoped to be.
After three hours of sleep, I got back on 40 and 80 and kept
going. However, after about 30 minutes, I pretty much had worked
80 meters out and 40 was starting to slow down... After 3 minutes
of CQing with no results, I boldly decided to go to 20 meters
and try CQing there. I heard one or two signals on the band, and
they were pretty loud. There wasn't enough activity to S&P,
so I called CQ at 12:37 and got called by AJ1E in EMass with a
big signal I think I was on 14009 or so. I worked a QSO on
40 with the sceond radio, and then VE1ZJ called me on 20 and
then K1VDF in Ct. This band was wide open to the Northeast
and it didn't seem like anyone else was on the band. In the
last 23 minutes of the 12Z hour, I had 11 QSOs on 20. Not great,
but it was good production for the second day of the SS. The
overall hour came in at 44 - a total any B power station would be
happy with at this point in the contest.
The 13Z hour was magic on 20 - with 33 answers to my CQs to go
with 14 second radio QSOs on 40. This is also when VO1HE called
me on 20 to give me the last mult I would get. This really saved
me from getting burnt later on trying to bust through VO1MP's
pileup.
During the 14Z hour, 20 started getting crowded and it was
time to move to 15 and hope that the same kind of thing would
repeat itself. 15 came through with 28 answers to my CQs in
the 14Z hour to go with 12 second radio QSOs on the second
radio. That adds up to 40 - another great hour.
I pretty much hung out on 15 for most of the daytime. I would
use a 30 minute break here and there to give the band a chance
to recover with fresh stations to work. As the day wore on, my
second radio production started to fall off. I just kept tuning
over the same stations over and over again. I did manage 50 second
radio QSOs in the last 6 hours, but only 12 in the last 3. That
was one of the surprises for me - is that this high of a percentage
of my QSOs would come from CQing in the last 3 hours. The second
radio did pick up in the last hour, when it seemed that a lot of
new stations showed up on the bands.
My average rate for the afternoon was just over 30 QSOs an hour.
There were many times were nobody would answer me for 4 or 5
minutes, but then I would get 2 or 3 stations calling in and that
would set me up for another dry spell.
Around 0100Z, I had 1069 QSOs and a big storm blew in. I used up
my last off time and went outside to watch the rain. I got back
on at 0131 on 20 meters, rain static and all, to see if I could
get some rate going. That first 30 minutes yielded only 10 QSOs.
There is a gap of 13 minutes in the log with nothing. Finally,
K7SS called me and woke me up. However, the next 30 minutes
only yielded 8 QSOs!! A 7 minute and a 8 minute gap showed up.
I tried CQing on 40, and would get one or two answers, and then
nothing. I was really worried about having enough margin to
break the record after log checking at this point.
Finally, around 0230, some new stations started showing up on
the bands. Also, 20 meters seemed to settle a little for me
and I started getting a few answers. The last 30 minutes yielded
18 QSOs - the same as the previous hour. It felt wonderful to
crawl over 1100 QSOs (thanks to KM3T for calling in for #1100).
I did spend the last 10 minutes CQing on 40 and had 4 stations
answer to go with one QSO on 20 to end up at 1105.
Finally, it was time for a Corona and to tune in on 3830 to hear
how the high power shootout went.
I feel I was lucky to pick a weekend to do this when conditions
were poor for many people. My geographical location played
really well. If conditions the first night had been more
like the conditions the second night, I think I would not
have had anywhere near the success I did.
In summary, the things that really worked well for me were:
- Able to CQ on 10 meters with results for two hours at the
start of the contest.
- Being able to avoid 20 meters for the first three hours of
the contest - and pretty much skipping it to go to 40.
- The endless answers to my CQs on 40.
- Good second radio production on 80.
- Fantastic production on 20 to start the morning.
- Crawling along on 15 during the day at around 30/hour.
About the only thing that didn't go well was those couple
of hours before things picked up right at the end. If I
hadn't have had at least one break when the storm hit, it
would have been much worse.
I also never heard VY1JA - so that was a missed multiplier.
So there you have it - the long story. The radios were the
same TS850s I used last year. I checked their wattermeters
against a bird slug and they ended up the power control all
the way down, and the carrier between 11 O'clock and 12
O'clock (depended on the band and match). It would have been
nice to have done this with my K2, but I am not quite
comfortable enough yet with it to use it in a major contest.
See http://www.kkn.net/~tree/gallery for the pictures.
And thanks for all of the QSOs!
73 Tree N6TR
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