W8CAR single op high power
695 Qs 55 st/ve 32 dx 1847 pts.= 160,689
I love this contest and planned all year for this one. I encountered the noise
and used every ounce of filtering and EWEness but still felt like an alligator
much of the time. I had a tough time keeping up with last years results (hour
by hour) and nearly gave up early on but kept at it. I ended up about 15 %
better than last years score but spent more time on the band.
The end of day one showed 513 qs and 70 mults that included 3 JAs. The Sunday
morning JA opening was trashed by local static and not only a phone station but
an AM phone stion in the JA window. The opening for me was 15 minutes of
frustration - and no more JAs!.
Friday had high winds which made every insulator within hearing distance sing
the body electric. I was surprised that with gusts of 55 mph mothing came
down! Many stations could be heard calling but I just couldn't pull them out
and when I did-and recognised the call -I knew something was amis as these
calls usually JUMP out of the ether. The few EU I worked FRI/SAT were tough
but strangely as the night wore on they got better as stateside got worse. It
seemed as if activity was down-I guess many people hung it up early.
Saturday was tough and I never did find a good frequency to run on but did
manage to end up with 33 DX in the log up from 27 last year. The second night
was tougher but I only had 182 qs but managed to add 17 mults-that kept me in
there till early than I was just tooo tired. At 0730 I cashed it in till 1100
and only really worked a few more before deciding 700 was STILL the goal for
next year.
Thanks to all the great ops who gave me numerous repeats and stayed with my
attempts to copy them.
TILL NEXT YEAR
equipment:FT1000MP, Alpha 76pa, inverted L with elevated radials
5 EWES 2 NE phased with ANC-4 (which REALLY helped with the noise at times)
respectfully submitted
Dan
W8CAR
>From N6NT@worldnet.att.net (Bruce Sawyer) Tue Jan 28 20:32:55 1997
From: N6NT@worldnet.att.net (Bruce Sawyer) (Bruce Sawyer)
Subject: Internal Contest Keyer of FT1000MP?
Message-ID: <19970128203253.AAA8793@LOCALNAME>
At 05:48 PM 1/28/97 +0000, Pitman Zoltan wrote:
>HI friends,
>
>some weeks ago I built the switch needed for the Contest Keyer of the MP.
>The programmable message memories work well but the contest number
>doesn't, as well as the decrement/increment function.
>
>The switch has been built as it's described in the manual. When I press
>the buttons assigned for transmit number/increment/decrement the rig beeps
>but there's no other reaction.
>
>Any experience with this?
>
>73s
>
>Zoli HA1AG
>
>
>
>
Same here. I think there are some undocumented changes that came along
after the manual was printed. At least on my rig, remoate keys #1 and #2
are ordinary memory cells the same as #5-#8. But really, I think I'd rather
have it this way than the way it's documented in the manual. Do you think
anybody really needs this contest number feature?
What this widget is really good for is that now I can set up to operate with
3 different speeds all immediately accessible. I can have the logging
program set at one speed, my SuperCMOS II keyer set at another, and still a
third speed set on the MP's internal keyer for use by the remote jack. (I
assume you have already noticed that the MP's internal keyer fires from the
remote jack even when the internal keyer is turned off. I'm really
impressed that the designers thought to do that.)
Bruce, N6NT
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