View of the operating position at AK1W (@K5ZD)
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View of the operating position at AK1W (@K5ZD) |
The first night was great. For the first time, I got a start that let me keep up with the guys down south. Was on 14025 for first 3.5 hours, then switched to 7054, where I stayed for the next 7 hours!
My last section for the Sweep was WCF! (Next to last was VT.) With the sweep in hand by 0630Z the first night, all the pressure was off and it was just a matter of chasing QSOs. In 30 years for doing SS CW, I think this was only the second time I ever had a sweep before I went to bed.
Was ahead of my best score ever from New England when the solar flare hit at 16z. That was the end of that... kept spending off time hoping things would improve. Finally got in a position where I had no choice but to operate most of the last 3 hours.
Even so, this should hold up to be a new New England division record. Will be interesting to see if I can sneak into the Top Ten again. If the Red Sox can win, anything is possible!
CW SS 2004 - Wow!
1st weekend of November – CW SS time again – the highlight of my year in hamming, ever since K6QIP, my high school classmate Elmer, invited me to participate with his neighbor K6IYI, for a multi-op entry, using a DX-100, an S-20R, a 40 meter vertical and a 20 meter dipole. I don’t remember what our score was, but the intense excitement and teamwork of taking turns and staying on the air for 24+ hours has turned me on to CW SS for life! We used pencils rather than computers for logging, and no memory keyers – we did have a Vibroplex Blue Racer bug which we got quite good with!.
But that was back in 1958- in 1959 I worked SS from home, worked W1AW, sent in a QSL card, got one back (Chuck Bender, W1WPR, opr), and the QST article with SS results included a photo of cards W1AW had received from SS contacts - and my K6VVD card was visible and readable – totally cool! Fast forward to 2004 – I’ve had time to get to know my new IC-746Pro, figured out how to use the sequence number feature in the internal memory keyer, added some counterpoise radials to my pair of triple-resonator Hustlers mag-mounted on the roof, and N3FJP’s Nov Sweeps logging software is ready for another run on my IBM Thinkpad – I’ve discovered program features that I wasn’t aware of earlier.
The PC clock is been sync’d with WWV, everything seems to work, it’s 2100Z, here come the signals….. woops – has it been THAT long since I’ve done CW – those fists are awfully fast. I listen closely to a few other QSO exchanges, then my ear/brain connection get sync’d up, and since I’m logging on the PC, I just have to press a key for a letter, not try to use a pencil to make a legible symbol I’ll need to recopy later – PC logging is the way to go – dup checking is covered, you can see what sections you need – answer some CQ’s – away we go! This is 1 in the afternoon – 10 meters is very sparse, but 15 is alive – every QSO is a new section when you’re starting – her comes NTX, Saskatchewan, Delaware (my first ever!) Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota, MDC, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Virginia, East Pennsylvania, Wisconsin (again), Illinois,. Bands a bit squishy, propagation’s changing. Pushbutton band change – 28 Mhz, hit the Tuner button, SWR is great, here comes Ohio, Wisonsin, 2 more Illinois, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, two more Ilinois, and another Ohio. Time to take a break! Just under 2 hours – 23 QSO’s. The logging software tracks my rate, QSO’s/hr for the last 20 and last 60 minutes – a nice how goes it – when your rate drops, it’s time to either change bands or take a break and relax and unwind – walk the dogs, acknowledge the world!
As Saturday unfurls I fit in several more sessions – half an hour on 40 and 80 after supper – interesting skip – Virginia, Connecticut, Western Washington (2 in a row!), Oklahoma, a neighbor in Orange County, Wisconsin, and Nevada – the last 3 on 80 meters – not bad for just a mobile antenna on the roof! Another half-hour break, then New Mexico, Arizona, Sacramento Valley on 80 meters, then up to 40 for Northern New Jersey, Illinois, and West Virginia – the magic and vagaries of propagation are still a thrill!
It’s after 9 Saturday evening – some stations are really getting up in their sequence numbers – 40 meters is cooking – love the filtering in the radio – Noise Reduction helps a lot too – just focus on copying the exchanges – my auto sequencing has to have 3 digits, so my exchanges have a leading zero while my count is still less than 100 – humbling as I run New Hampshire (his 370 my number 38!), Colorado (293 to my 40!) – oops, here comes some man-machine interface problems – the keyer control on the 746 is via the little function keys below the screen – they’re not really designed for heavy duty use, and I’m having to really push IN just right to get the contest sequence to trigger. I pushed and held a bit, and the memory repeated, and the sequence counter incremented twice! I pushed again and it stopped, but I ran another contact or two before I realized that the Sequence NR I was sending was off by one from what the logging software was entering. Made a quick note that I’d have to edit the log file, then while mousing around, discovered that and Edit Entry feature was right under my mouse, I hope I got the entries corrected (the Contest Branch will null out those entries if I busted the exchange – or they’ll null out the entries of the guys I sent one number to and logged a different one – oops!) I did my best to figure out what happened, we’ll be more careful now…
My operating style is mainly hunt and pounce – my antennas are the HF equivalent of a “rubber duck” on an HT, so my signal isn’t exactly commanding. Once or twice I get answers to CQ’s, but my best results come from answering other stations’ CQ’s.
For me, contesting is about improving your technique – not just your copying abilities, but your personal operating style, and finding the weak points in your procedures and your equipment. In the case of the equipment, the manual for my 746Pro points out that you can trigger the memories not only with the F keys on the front panel, but also with a setup of pushbuttons and resistors connected across certain terminals on the mike jack – there’s even a ready made accessory (the iMate, advertised in QST) that does it exactly that. By next year, I’ll either have an iMate, or build something similar - I need to finish getting hooked up for PSK31 on this radio anway – time for a construction project indoors soon!
Another break to clear the brain and have some dessert (copying high speed CW takes energy!) And now I’m sending AND copying faster that what whizzed by me at the start. Continuing on 40 – South Texas, Connecticut, West Mass, another Orange County (weird quavery quality to these local ground wave contacts), Wisconsin, New Hampshire, South New Jersey, South Texas, Puerto Rico (had to take my turn and keep trying on that one!), South Texas, and a weird callsign, listen to a couple of his exchanges, yes, it’s VY2/AJ6V, another Maritime Province section, then North Texas with N5QQ (wonder if he’s chuckling too, we both have two Q’s in our call, takes longer to send, but it’s got panache!), now comes West Virginia and Colorado.
Time for another break! Take the dogs out, let them log some lap time, check the news on TV – now it’s 2230 local, 40 meters is still cooking, back on for another round -here comes South Texas, Oregon, 2 more South Texas, Maritime Provinces (VE1JF), North Carolina, North Jersey, running out of new material, drop down to 80 meters for Iowa and South Dakota -2 new sections in a row. Time for some sleep – a busy day scheduled for Sunday, but I WILL fit some more time in – I’ve never gotten all sections, but since I’ve adopted logging software, I always manage at least 100 contacts.
Sunday morning, up at 7AM, a quick protein breakfast – shirred egg, sausage patty, raisin bagel, juice and milk – get the brain up to speed – it’s daylight, but 10 meters is dead, 15 is hopping – the copying skills are fresh, here goes – North Florida, South Florida, New Hampshire, San Bernardino, North Texas, Western Washington, Illinois, Rhode Island (another first ever!), Tennessee (W4PA – that call rings a bell – his byline is on the CW DX Contest results article in September QST), East New York, Manitoba (VE4VV – gotta have total control of the keyer to send THAT call right, about as tricky as my old call – W7HSS), West Central Florida (new section, more ways than one!), band is going out, signals just disappear – 10 meters isn’t open yet, how about 20 meters – yes! Oregon, Sacramento Valley. Time to rest the brain, take the pups out, read the funnies and Parade magazine, get cleaned up and dressed.
0930 Local Sunday – time for another run – have to leave by 10:30 to join my Sax Quartet to play for lunch at my Dad’s convalescent home, but 10 meters IS open now (my favorite band – my first years hamming were in 57-58-59, and my adult Elmer K6QYL gave me his 3 element 10 meter beam when he upgraded to a tribander, and I worked the world on 10m with that beam and my Knight T-50 and WRL screen modulator!) Here come the contacts - East Pennsylvania, Georgia (new section) , Ohio, Indiana, a quavery ground wave with N6GL next door in Los Angeles, Tennessee, Virgin Islands (way cool!), West Central Florida, Maryland District of Columbia (2nd one), Montana, North Dakota (both new –scarce sections too!), South Dakota, and New Hampshire. My ride just phoned to confirm directions to my QTH -told him to look for antennas! – we’re car pooling into LA so we can use the Diamond Lanes on the freeway.
Fabulous time with the music – we read some really tricky quartet parts – some holiday music (Let it Snow, several Christmas Jazz numbers), some classical (Bach Sarabande and Badinerie, Children’s Prayer from Hansel and Gretel by Humperdink), a jazzy Jericho chart, sight read through the Theme from the Munsters (an absolute HOOT - very tricky feature for my baritone sax!) , a really fun ragtime arrangement – Maple Leaf rag – I think my musical rhythm and sight processing of the notes was better for the hours of CW leading up to the musical event – nice side effect). We enjoyed some social time after a 90 minute rehearsal/performance, then back home, try a few ragtime and blues duets, them gracefully end the musical interlude, and GET BACK ON THE AIR!
Not a whole lot of time – have to visit my daughter and her fiancé for dinner, but the bands are still open, I can fit in maybe another hour – boy do I get a run here! 15 meters is cooking – EPA, WWA, SD, ENY, MDC, CO, MT, BC (new section!), CT, NTX, MI (first Michigan, my native state), STX, MO, VA, East Bay (first one), SV, BC, WWA, OK, West Texas, Sacramento Valley (new sections come less frequently now), SV, and NC. 113 total contacts, I finally got past that leading Zero in my memory keyer.
The stats from N3FJP’s software show 7 hours and one minute of operating time – it’s been a blast. Off to my daughters for dinner, and review and print the logs the next day. Export the Cabrillo format file, rename it, email it in – oops, a bounce, need my callsign in the subject line. Done, resubmitted. This was a blast. Hope to work you on SKN. See you in CW SS next year for sure! I’ll see if I can get closer to that clean sweep!
73 and happy contesting –
Fred Wagner, KQ6Q, Cypress, California
VE7CA's homebrew station fired up for the 2004 CW SS Contest. |
The most interesting story though is what happened on Sunday afternoon. Aurora, even as low a 20 meters. Pointing my Yagi NE, many stations not only had the typical aurora swishing sound but also produced, when using a narrow 250Hz IF filter, terrible clicking sounds streched over several hundred Hz. It took me a minute to realize what was going on but when I turned my yagi S the same stations that sounded clicky when pointing NE now sounded normal. A check on 6 meters also confirmed a strong aurora opening as west coast stations were calling CQ A and working central US stations off the aurora curtain as well as some even working KH6 stations and later some KL7s.
Good fun and great time to test a homebrew rig. No fire running full 100 watts hour after hours. Hurrah!
CU you all in the next contest.
73
VE7CA Markus Hanen
ve7ca@rac.ca
Web: www.qsl.net/ve7ca
What a letdown -had almost 8 hours left to find DE and VI - W3PP called me! so only needed VI and not a sniff (I use NO spotting stuff at all-so dunno if they were around by Sunday afternoon - but the KP3 was sitting CQing at S9+20 for 3 hours on 20 so there should have been prop to VI)- My excuse is I missed VI Sunday AM , my trusty TR7 after 25 years decided to want to go to 11000 khz no matter what . So four hours later I got it going again but it was already noon Sunday , bet thats when VI was available.
Same ole story , I guess wait til next year. What an aurora Sun PM , sounded like two meters back in the late fifties.
Oh well maybe I will dust off the D104 and try phone ss , but I don't copy phone too well. 73 Hank K7HP
Sweepstakes - What a Contest!
This was my first ever Sweepstakes entry (I operated a token effort a few years ago at a friend's station, but never sent in a log.) It was a lot of fun using W6YX, the excellent station of the Stanford Amateur Radio Club! Made a clean sweep and 950 Qs, not bad for a non-contester.
I was happy that nothing blew up, and no computers crashed - this made all the setup work worthwhile. Conditions were great, except for the huge aurora Sunday evening. Also, my CW skills were greatly improved after the nadir they had reached at the time of the WPX CW contest. By the end of the SweepStakes CW, 30 wpm was not a problem for me.
Here are some observations from my newby point of view:
- some of the big guns refused to QRS for slower ops.
- Many stations sent 30 wpm during the aurora, impossible to copy due to multipath echoes. Aurora newbies!
- Pointing a spare antenna North or Northwest during the aurora helped reduce echoes on receive.
- Best DX on 75 meters: VE9DX QRP class in MAR. No problem on the 4-square. Uncopyable on the dipole. Wow! The new 4-square is working great!
- Lots of QRP stations called me. Many were well over S9 before the aurora started.
- On Saturday, 40 meters was open and workable to East Coast hours before sunset here on the West Coast.
- Packet was extremely useful for finding mults.
- very bursty QSO rates, probably due to spotting networks.
- Due to packet spots being quantized to 100 Hz increments, it paid to call CQ on 100 Hz boundaries so that the packet pouncers would be on freq when they answered.
- Since W6YX was so loud, eventually many mults answered our CQ. However, DXing skills still count in contests. Getting the sweep early removes the pressure to waste time chasing mults. I did try chasing some mults Saturday evening. This strategy proved to be correct since the predicted arrival of 3 CMEs made life difficult for mult-chasers on Sunday.
- K2NNY in particular was very difficult to work until his pileup subsided. I just kept checking back on him every so often with the B VFO. Worked him on 75 meters. It was the only NNY station heard here. At least he was CQing and not S&P!
- Next time I will have my CW skills built up some more to reduce fill requests.
- A few hours after the contest ended, in the middle of the huge aurora with a K-index of 8+, 75 meters short path to Europe opened up with some 20 dB over 9 signals! Our dipole was about 5 dB better than the 4-square, indicating strong high-angle propagation. The 4-square showed almost identical signals from NE and SE, with a slight preference for SE. Big-time skew path! I worked OE6MBG, a couple Bulgarians, a German, and S50A. Victor Zk1CG told me that he heard them too, but 100 watts and a dipole wasn't enough to break through the wall of West Coast stations. Victor was 10 over 9, and gave W6YX a 20 over 9 report. This was all during a very strong aurora that was reportedly visible in Reno, Nevada. No flutter, just some moderate QSB and a high noise level at about S8-9 (not lightning static, just a continuous hissing.)
See you in the SSB Sweeps!
John
This was my 40th CW SS contest and it is still fun. Condx this year were good until near the end of the contest. Was only able to operate 16 hrs in the "Q" (QRP) class entry. From the WV section managed 329 QSO's in 78 sections but where oh where was the NWT ( VE8 ) section ??
Equipment was simple the TenTec Argo-556 QRP Xcvr, a pair of 65 foot phased verticals for 80 and 40 meters and 3 element yagi for 20, 15, and 10 meters.
Just for fun the power source for the entire contest was a 12 Volt RV battery being charged by a 3.5 Amp Solar panel.
See ya next year. Thanks for great contest - 73's Don W8DL
Man oh man-what work! It's like water torture trying to find someone you have not worked toward the end!
I didn't want to prolong the agony so kept at it and ended the agony at 0150 with my final one hour and 10 minutes required off-time. 30 hours has rarely felt so long a period of time!
This one will be my best, however, I suppose. 40 and 15 were the QSO bands, with 20 about half those numbers. 10 Meters was a "sucker band" as it sounded so good with some real pounder-inners, but was too "thin" in terms of footprint. 80 was open too but not many casuals were there. It seems there always are some new guys in there. Looking at the band totals, I suppose I worked a lot stations on 80 after all, but didn't seem like it at the time.
We had company Saturday AM before the contest as Tom, W0GG, and Nancy stopped by here to visit from Colorado as they were in San Antonio for a conference. It was great seeing Tom and Nancy, very good friends for over twenty five years, but it meant I raced to the station just before the contest started. I missed the news reports that a mass of charged particles was on the way, and had I known that, I might have taken off when things got slow Sunday AM. But like N2IC stated, I also slogged on. Looking at the hourly rates of 45-24-31 for the first three full hours after getting on Sunday AM, I probably made a mistake. But heck, that was OK compared to the Sunday afternoon and evening BLAHS!
Speaking of dying, my Alpha 87A died Sunday. Well, it didn't die. That fan which had started making noise died, so you can't operate w/out a cooling fan. It was like a 747 in terms of noise and shrieking. So I hunkered down with one amp (Alpha 76PA) on the run station and did all my Sunday S&Ping with 100W. Hardly even noticed the difference except for some backscatter stuff. Other than that, the gear all worked OK, and TR 6.78 was flawless for me. I finally feel really comfortable with it. For CW SO2R there is no better.
I tried to make 1300 QSOs, and had it teed up with 1299 with five minutes left
for me to operate. A W6 called but was a dupe, and no one else. Darn! So I
missed the elusive 1300. Oh well. This really is a hard contest!
Note, I ended up with 1295 valid QSOs after removing three dupes and one mangled QSO where I got all flummoxed with TR and deleted the call sign of a K8. Sorry about that!
Great contest - best score yet - missed PAC, AK and NT for the sweep. Aurora at end of contest made for tough contacts. C U next year 73, Bill
Another emotional roller coaster.
I'm starting to think that I'm spending too much time reading about contesting, promoting contesting, training contest ops, thinking about contesting, writing about contesting, etc. and not enough time actually prepping for the contests I enter.
My ideal contest prep would consist of: making sure I have TRLog configured the way I want for the particular contest; doing at least 2 hours' CW practice with the TR simulator using calls from previous SS contests; running propagation predictions; reading all my previous years' stories about the contest, as well as those from others which I have saved from 3830 posts; making sure I know the rules; identifying the important mults (in SS, the Sections with very few stations) and, particularly in SS, identifying likely call signs for these mults (WB0O comes to mind); creating an operating plan which represents my best guess as to which band to be on at any particular time to optimize the mult/rate trade-off; making sure the gear is all configured and working the way I want; getting enough rest ahead of time; and buying a bottle of wine to drink while I'm winding down and composing the after-the-contest story.
You've probably figured out that the only prep that actually got done ahead of time was buying the wine.
Friday night would have been a good time to do this stuff but, instead, I went to hear about the VE7SV/FP expedition at the DX Club meeting. Many things about it impressed me but the biggest one was that, just 15 minutes before the truck arrived to haul everything away, one station was still operating with just a dipole, working Eu, and the pileup sounded the same as it did after the first CQ when they arrived. Another thing that got me a little excited was the statement from the keeper of the log that, while he hadn't checked thoroughly, he hadn't noticed my call in there. I felt better when ops I had worked assured me that I must be in there. Left fairly early as had a 30 mile drive home and wanted to make sure I got enough sleep and some time for prep for the big weekend.
Didn't sleep well, didn't wake up well, got up about three hours before the start and dragged my butt the whole time. Actually, including about half an hour after the start because that's how long it took me to get everything functioning (well, not everything - just the gear, not me). This isn't a propitious beginning for an activity that, while somewhat gruelling, is supposed to be fun. If I'm feeling rested and have had some recent practice, I have no trouble with 30 wpm CW in contests. Admittedly, 123A W2BCD 45ENy is a much bigger bite to chew and less predictable than 59K, but still, given appropriate practice, I can do it. Sadly, none of those conditions applied, and I was having a tough time, as were those I contacted.
My mood wasn't helped when I noticed that I hadn't told the logging program that we're now on Standard time and that 70 Qs have the wrong time and some have the wrong date. Oh well, I have a little program I wrote which will add or subtract any desired amount of time from any arbitrary sequence of Qs in TRLog and fix the time and date.
Now, as all those who have exhorted their flagging spirit to stay in the chair can attest, you feel a much greater sense of accomplishment if you do. In my case, 2 hours in, I said, "Screw it," headed upstairs and laid down. Not a good sign. After about an hour's sleep, I got up and went back at it for another 8 hours.
It wasn't a good 8 hours - lots of stumbling over the exchange. Not only that, the data base I've built up over the last few years isn't telling me anything about the check or Section of folks I know I've worked many times in the past. Altogether, not a happy camper. I really try hard to be as competitive as I can with my modest station but I know that I've already blown this one, so I decide, instead, to bend my efforts towards a clean sweep of all 80 ARRL/RAC Sections. Only managed that once since my contesting reincarnation in 2000. O, had I but realized the slippery slope to which I was setting my foot I would have QRT right then, rather than confess the degradation to which I eventually succumbed.
So, lots of S&P, lots of hours with rates less than 20. "Lots" is code for, "All but one". Still, I'm hunting mults so rate is going to be poor.
I have this belief which, although totally blown away by the wild propagation conditions we experienced (my only VE6 was on 10m - usually they're on 40 or 80), says that one should expect the close in stuff to be worked on 40 and 80. Well, 20 died around 6 pm so down to 40 with my miserable dipole which is up about 40 ft in the middle and 20 ft at the ends. Then again, if I'm looking for close in stuff, that high angle radiation should be just what I need. So, what close in stuff did I work? These are all new mults. WY-yes!! RI-huh!! (but very welcome) NE-this is close? EMa-this isn't but, why would I care? It's a mult. Between 40 and 80 I got 25 mults, although none in the last 90 minutes. Gotta remember to be hard-nosed about this and go to bed whan production falls off. Still, you gotta love 3 consecutive Qs with UT, SD and ID in the space of 7 minutes - all new mults, followed by another 3 consecutive Qs with new mults in 10 minutes - SB, EW and IA ..... I'm a sucker for late night radio.
Some time ago I went to quite a bit of trouble to put up an inverted L for 160 in the hopes of getting a few mults. It's only 30 ft high and 120 ft long and has as many buried radials as you can get into a rectangular quadrant of about 15 x 25 ft. Say, there must be some Qs to be made on 160!! Wrong.
Finally go to bed at 1:30 am with a pathetic 234 Qs and a not so bad 66 mults with about 13 hours to go.
But, dear friends, what hasn't been revealed here is the decision made in the depths of darkness to sell my honour for a clean sweep. Until now, in my entire recent contesting career of four years, I swear by all that is holy that there have been no spots to blot my escutcheon. O, how could I have been deluded into believing that a spotted sweep could be deemed "Clean"? Yet, in my mind's eye I saw that unholy grail dancing before me, beckoning me, nay, propelling me forward to conjoin with those unclean, by very definition, "spotters". The local manifestation of these hideous beings is presided over by an outwardly jocular but inwardly sinister VE7CC with his "cluster". The Serpent of Eden offered but one apple - here I was tempted with a "cluster" and, to my eternal shame, I confess that I accepted. O, Adam, never again shall I revile you. I shall not dwell on the perverse pleasures which accrued to me as I watched the vari-coloured spots cascading down the screen of my secondary viewing device nor the growing sense of alarm as I attempted to manipulate the various philtres offered to control them and thereby keep them from overwhelming me.
I haven't got around to feeding cluster spots straight into TR yet so I displayed them on a 2nd monitor mounted above the main one, using AR-User to do the filtering, etc. I was amazed at the rate at which spots were coming in. It reminded me of the opening minutes of "The Matrix". I'd be scrolling up the screen looking for mults to punch into the bandmap and a bunch more spots would come in, dumping the cursor back to the bottom of the screen. It was a real pain, particularly in the neck as I had my head tilted up to better see the 2nd monitor. This seemed like even less fun than I was having before. However, once I didn't need to check the old ones any more, it was easy to keep an eye open for new mults. The little flurries of new mults mentioned earlier were due to seeing them spotted and going there.
Back at it at 7:30 am, not feeling a great deal better. 20 is alive and so, to a lesser extent, is 15. Damn. should have gone to bed and got up an hour earlier. No plan - that's my problem. I'm still needing SFl, SC, SD, NT, Me, Nl, VI, SNJ, Mb, Ab, NLI, Pac, Ms and Qc.
Well, with the help of the spots I managed to get all but Qc. I know I would have missed most of them without the spots. The only sign of Qc was a spot for someone on SSTV. Never heard one. Never heard anyone calling one. VY1JA was very patient and finally pulled me through under difficult conditions. Thanks J.
I did manage to get the database working. I had loaded the DX one. Not too many checks or sections in there. Loaded the domestic one and everything now working FB.
It was pretty obvious that there was weird stuff happening with propagation. Signals would just die away for a few minutes and then come back. Around 2115 W3s and 4s had a very strong auroral buzz on them. One W4 I worked had no tone at all - sounded just how I imagine spark used to sound. Not used to working W4 through the auroral oval.
It's 2210, I haven't heard or seen a spot for a single KH6 and I'm getting nervous. Oops, there's a spot for KH6NF so I go there immediately. So did everyone else - what a hoot. He's obviously trying to make up for lost time as he's zipping along at about 35 wpm. So, I finally figure out what he's sending, set TR to 35 wpm so I can sound like a S... Hot Op and dump my call a number of times. He finally comes back to me. I'm so excited I hit the exchange button when he's only half finished sending my exchange, so, of course, I have to send it again. So much for the SHO image.
Had a sudden flurry of calls once, indicating that I had been spotted. Just at this moment, for reasons I can't explain, the spot display jumped from the 2nd monitor to the first one, covered up TR and took the focus away from it. By the time I had banished the spots back to the 2nd monitor, everybody had left. I was spotted a few more times but no flurry of calls. Another blow to the SHO image. I saw myself being spotted on the wrong frequency once. Naturally, I immediately moved there. Didn't help.
The last 2 hours on 40 and 80 were pretty tough. It was quite interesting, though, seeing all the spots on 20 where people were working each other off the aurora. I didn't bother as I didn't see any I hadn't already worked.
I don't know what to think about spots. Had I started off using them I probably would have got a sweep. I'd rather get a high score. I didn't bother chasing every spot I saw, just the mults, but still, it was distracting. I think that generating my own with a 2nd radio might help get the rate up.
Hmmm..... just realized..... I sent A for my precedence the whole time while I guess I should have changed to U. I suppose this is somewhat compensated for by my not realizing that I could up my power from 150W. Of course the max from the MkV is 200W so it wouldn't have made a lot of difference. Oh well.
See you in the SS SSB. Looks like I've got 7 newbie, no-ticket ops signed up for it. Six of these are different newbies from the 10 I had over for CQ WW SSB. Should be fun.
Thanks for the Qs (and the patience).
73 de Jim Smith VE7FO
I didn't get a chance to operate SS this year. Too much work (job), too many leaves to rake, and too much good football! I usually manage to participate but this particular weekend is always a bad one for me. Would it ever be possible to rotate or switch some of the contest dates around from time to time to avoid this kind of problem?
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