W4KAZ

Many thanks to Bruce and Laurie for hosting the group. I know I had a great time operating their station.

For NAQP SSB I was part of that group, including N1LN, N1YXU, NT4D, KA1ARB and myself, W4KAZ. We operated Multi-2 from the N1LN station under the NC4KW call sign. Final score 195,880 with 1180 QSO’s and 166 mults before log checking.

Bruce let us show up a bit early to give us a few quick lessons on the station. This was the first time any of the group has guest op’ed at their location, so its going to take a few stabs to get all of the ducks in a row. Despite the new situations, everything seemed to go pretty well. Murphy refused to put in an appearance, despite the green ops. The easy station layout helped.

The equipment was all functioning as expected, and the antennas seem to play as well as I expected, i.e., much, much better than my few simple wire antennas strung out from the KazShack. We didn’t do a lot of jockeying the antennas, but it didn’t really seem necessary. Conditions were the least cooperative aspect of the weekend, as 10m and 15m did not open as we had hoped they might. The low band noise levels were high, as the storms seemed to be plopped right in our

At the outset, we started on 20m and 15m but the lack of any signs of life on 15m made that seem a futile waste of time. So the 15m station moved down to 40m. But even 40m was slow. 20m was the best band at the outset but rates there were not very high either. 40m began showing signs of life as folks seemed to begin migrating down due to conditions. When NT4D turned the 40m station over to me, I noticed the rate had been creeping up there. At some point after I turned it over to KA1ARB, the 40m station got out ahead of the 20m station.

Closing in on the 400 QSO point before dinner time, I was over on the 20m station and N1LN was on the 40m station. Bruce had hit a lull, and 20m activity picked up a bit. I finally got the 20m station caught up at 190 Q’s each, but N1LN soon had a flurry of QSO’s on 40m, and didn’t look back. When Bruce and I gave up the chairs to catch a bite to eat, we could hear NT4D and KA1ARB tearing into the after-dinner pileups. Rob was having good rates on 40m, and we had our best rates of the contest then.

As the evening progressed 40m mostly kept delivering a slow but steady trickle of QSO’s. Later in the evening I moved the 20m station down to 80m, and still later down to 160m as rates on 20m slowed.

Overall I probably operated about six hours total. Without a formal plan, I think the team was good at giving up the chair for the other ops to participate. At the end, I was begging someone to pull teeth on 160m. That was a bit too much of a grind.

I think the N1LN station is going to become well known in the Multi op and M/2 classes, and Bruce is going to have a blast operating SO2R. Their station plays well on 40m and 20m. I’ll need to reserve opinion on 15m and 10m. The K3 is a damn strong radio, and it seems to be a S&P op’s dream rig, given the filtering.

It seems like the propagation favored the Gulf coast, based on the huge score reported to the 3830 reflector by NX5M and by W5KFT. Those guys really kicked butt on 20m. I suspect W5WMU will also turn in a good score. But I think for a maiden voyage shakedown cruise, we probably did pretty well as NC4KW. The propagation for NAQP from our NC QTH sure didn’t deliver that extra 1300 Q’s we would have needed to win, but I think we will be competitive with the regional stations.

We shall see, as I expect to be ready to grab the mike and make some noise as often as I am welcome to join the fun.

I hope that coincides with good propagation soon!

This turned out a bit better than I expected, despite the pop-up T-storms in the area all afternoon.

I’m always a bit leery of the August NAQP’s. My first radio in the shack after re-licensing in 2000 wound up being zapped by a nearby lightning strike in the midst of NAQP in 2001. It turns out one of my neighbors had more three houses over had a lot more damage. We think it hit the utility pole in front of his house. It seemed to come into everyones house via the CATV lines. My CATV boxes were shot, and the CATV lines cross the shack where the antennas come in. But the radio was toasted via the connection to the computer. The radio’s CPU was shot.

Come to think, NAQP has been an expensive contest. I lost a power supply in January NAQP. Hmmm…

So the T-storms always give me cause to pause. The WX at 1800z wasn’t looking good, but I decided to give it a whirl. I checked 10m first, and there were signals. Hot Dawg! After three quick Q’s, There’s a loud static crash on the radio followed by a distant rumble of thunder. Plug Pulled PDQ.

THAT didn’t last long.

After a few hours but-not-in-chair, around 2030z a check of the local WX radar seemed to show the KazShack QTH would be in a hole between the scattered storms, so I hopped back on. After a short bit of S&P, I got in a short run on 20m of about 70 minutes duration, then broke off again for dinner with the family.

After dinner, I hit the waves again about 2250Z, and operated until about 0400z. I did only enough S&P to find a decent run frequency. My goal was to practice running on CW. I met that goal easily enough. I was only able to run at about 22wpm, because I was just not copying well enough to try to get up to higher speeds. Despite the relatively low CW speed, at one point the 10 minute rate was over 125/hr several times, and I had a 90 minute rate up to 70/hr at the peak. That’s easily the highest rate I have ever run on CW, even in contests with a simpler exchange. Great news.

After the slow start, I sort of fell into the groove. I really started to feel comfortable running CW, and that was really cool. When there is more confidence in the accuracy of my copy, it will be a major milestone even if the comfortable CW speed is below 25wpm. Pushing the CW speed up to 30wpm is the next target beyond 100% copy.

There is of course still tremendous room for improvement. I’m sure my score will be demolished in log checking. My error rate will be terrible. The new goal is clean copy. Aim for less than 1% errors(be happy under 3%)

The Good:

• Great CW rates on 15m and 20m. Decent high band conditions for late summer.
• Best sustained CW rates I’ve been able to manage.
• K2 is a great contest radio. Excelsat S&P in a crowd. Learning the features.
• The interference between the ft-920 and the K2 are not so bad. Tested with the 20m stub in place on the K2 and the 40m bandpass filter on the FT-920. Rudimentary SO2R might be possible on a budget.

The Bad:

• I’m expecting the log checking to decimate my score because of a high error rate. GET IT RIGHT
• Copy skills need a lot of work, as I needed a lot of fills due to not copying the exchange the first time. GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.
• Practice is also needed in pulling call signs from pile-ups. THAT’s a new experience. GET AT LEAST ONE PARTIAL FROM EVERY PILE-UP.

The Ugly:

• Horrid noise levels on 40m and 80m. I never even checked 160m. Pulled the Plug at midnight local. Ick. I sure hope its better for SSB.
• Thought the T-storm had snuck up on me at the start. CHECK THE WX RADAR.

Class: Single Op LP, .......Operating Time (hrs): 6.5
Summary:
Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
 160:    0     0
  80:    9     7
  40:   49    26
  20:  149    41
  15:   77    26
  10:   17     9
-------------------
Total:  301   109  Total Score = 32,809

I’m only back from the Cape Lookout expedition for a couple of hours now, but the activation of NA-067 from near the Cape Lookout lighthouse was a load of fun. We got excellent WX(for July in NC), the company was great, and conditions provided better results than the 2007 attempt. I’m tired, need a hot shower, and I’ll need to unpack some of the gear to get to the logs, but it looks like we’ll wind up with about 875+ QSO’s and over 120 mults.

!!!!!!!! . Way Cool . !!!!!!!!

We have a slew of great photos taken by N4YDU(and a few by W4KAZ) in the pipeline….coming real soon now.