Call: N8RA
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: CT- FN31
Club: Yankee Clipper Contest Club
Band QSOs Mults
-------------------
6: 248 89
2: 126 26
432: 8 4
Total: 382 119
Total Score = 46,410
Wow! It was another fun contest weekend.
At the beginning I had concerns that something on 6M was not working right.
E's were in but it seemed hard for me to make contacts. However, 15 minutes
later I was getting answers to my calls in pileups and CQing started to get
results. I guess the cloud just needed to move to a better spot for me. E's
were also present on Sunday, but not to as strong, not as long, and to fewer
parts of the country from here in NW Connecticut.
Activity on 2M was sparse at first on Saturday, likely everyone was on 6
making hay. 2M action did pick up in the evening and on Sunday. I had my
best grid count there ever, with all contact made on SSB or CW this time.
The farthest contact was a 370 mile random CW one.
Early Sunday morning I was greeted to heavy rain causing 20dB over S9 rain
static on 2M. Oh well, the coffee was hot and welcoming. When the rain let
up, I found that 6M tropo or ground wave out to the west was very good. It
was easy to log grids there that I could not get to hear me at all on
Saturday.
The station suffered two equipment failures, but one was really a blessing.
The first was a 6155 amplifier recently converted to 432. I was running it
conservatively, but right in the middle of answering someone on CW, there
was a muffled bang from inside of it, and then there was no output or HV. My
great hopes of finally getting something going on 432 has had a temporary
setback. For the first few hours when I did try some contacts, my receiver
or antenna did not seem up to par either.
The second problem was in my 2M remote receive preamp assembly which is at
the base of the 2M antenna tower, 250' from the shack. On Sunday afternoon,
I noticed that there were no signals on 2M. Now here in Connecticut there
are always signals on 2M during the contest. I switched out the preamp and
heard plenty of signals. Interestingly, with the preamp in line, the receive
noise increased as normal, but all the signals disappeared. After a couple
of treks out to the tower and back I discovered that one of the coaxial
relays in the preamp bypass circuit had failed, I think with an open coil.
In its de-energized state it grounds the input of the preamp. So with the
preamp switched in line, the preamp was running with its input still shorted
to ground. The reason this is good news is that in past contest there would
be an occasional loss of receive recovery after transmitting that I could
never track down. After taking this failed relay out of the line, 2M receive
returned to perfect operation for the rest of the contest. I think this may
also explain a sometimes growly modulation with weak signals, perhaps due to
weak switching of this relay causing a contact problem. My apologies go to
anyone who tried to answer my CQ's Sunday and found that I did not hear
them. Sorry.
73
Chet, N8RA
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