As my experience in this facet of the hobby grows, I've come to believe that
adequate physical AND mental preparation can add significantly to the final
score. Case in point: Greg, K4NO had been trying to pump me up and set a goal
of 100K points for the event. THis seemed like a huge stretch for me, not
remembering what my numbers were from last year. I himmed and hawed at the
suggestion and thought that I could set a goal of 400 Qs.
Saturday rolled around, I got the antennas set FB was getting ready to go. 30
minutes before the start, 3rd harmonic asks if I could put some gadget on his
new bike. A quick look at the watch, another quick look, "uh, sure son, this
shouldn't take THAT long." Well, at 1758 I hustled into the shack, fired up
the rig and laptop, and dialed in the 10M 'meet me' frequency Greg and I set
up. By 1703 I was ready to go.
No K4NO. I thought I missed him (in fact, I didn't work Greg at all). Turns
out the skip was way long. OK, time to start plugging away. At 1825 I decided
to check WWV and make sure the logger clock was set OK. WWV said 1826, the
logger said 1726 - I forgot to reset the laptop clock. Oops. In hind sight I
should have taken that first half-hour off and re-collected myself and my
thoughts and attacked at 1830.
Well, the numbers are like this:
Band Qs Mults
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
160 67 28
80 100 34
40 144 42
20 98 36
15 31 14
10 12 9
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
452 163 73,676 points
For some reason I thought I had 350 or so Qs last year and 400 would be a good
number to shoot for. Turns out I had 403 Qs last year and I was setting myself
up short of a realistic, stretch goal. Like most everyone else this is a
personal best as well, but I feel like I left a bunch of Qs on the table and
this leaves me somewhat empty.
Oh, well. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
73
Roger ...
KA9EKJ
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