By w4kaz, created on 2010.03.11 at 06:18:26 | last changed on 2010.03.11 at 22:18:15 |
The weekend over at the N1LN/N1YXU was a lot of fun, as always. Somewhat bleary eyed at the end, but that is to be expected.
The results…..2629 QSO’s, 435 mults, score of 3,417,795.
The propagation was not what we hoped for, and conditions were not close to what we enjoyed for ARRL DX CW only a couple of weeks ago. Not a shock, and probably the only disappointing aspect of the event for me.
We laid plans to open up on 40m and 80m. In hindsight, that was probably not the best choice, but it sure made sense at the time. 40m was decent at the beginning, but 80m wasn’t there yet, and as the lead-off op on 80m I was too slow to react to the actual conditions. Live and Learn.
The low bands were tough sledding all weekend. 40m was the money band in the first 24 hours, then 20m took over the lead role. It was extremely difficult to find and hold runs all weekend. 15m was fair on Saturday, not too good on Sunday. We worked JA’s on both 15m and 20m late Saturday afternoon, not many on Sunday. The conditions Sunday were maybe even a little worse than those we enjoyed for CQWW in October 2009.
Some of the QSO’s were interesting. Beaming Europe in the local morning, just after 1200z, I worked an HS0. Not just once, but one each on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. That had to have been long path propagation, because the short path was at enough of an angle off the beam to be in a null. Both stations had easily workable signals, no QSB on either. The stations that did call be on 80m at the start of the contest were all solid copy, showing that the band was indeed open at the time. Just nobody S&P’ing down there early in the contest. 40m produced a solid string of QSO’s in the hours following the EU sunrise. Probably just indicative of a lot of casual ops having some fun after a good night’s rest.
While going up and down the bands, I was hearing relatively few US stations calling. That made it more likely you could end up stacked on top of another station calling. Curious results ensue….
In his soapbox, N1LN describes some of the conditions from his own POV. I would need to agree about the QRM. 20m was a real zoo. I’m sure there were many stations calling that I could not hear through the heavy QRM. Many stations were stacked in layers calling CQ, and it was difficult to find a place in the bedlam. Stations would then park as little as 700hz up and start calling.
A real zoo. I just gotta start working on increasing the CW skills. At least I can be prepared – just in case propagation never really recovers.
The Good:
Worked some interesting Q’s.
Learning when to move the antennas
Always fun chatting with the crew during the down times.
Duke spanked UNC in the weekend’s basketball game of interest.
The Bad:
Overstaying my welcome when the plan to open on 80m drew few callers. Should have moved to 15m to round up what was available before it disappeared. As discovered on Sunday when 15m never really came back.
Poor 15m conditions on Sunday. Better on Saturday(but only fair).
Poor conditions overall, but better than last year.
The Ugly:
QRM levels worst I have experienced. That’s not a lot of experience, but it still seemed pretty darn difficult. That must be what the EU ops deal on a regular basis. I now have a lot more sympathy for the guys who can’t pull out my call from home when operating with 100w.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.02.23 at 06:02:58 | last changed on 2010.02.22 at 21:20:54 |
This year N1LN has been able to find enough operators to be able to host a M/2 effort for the ARRL DX SSB contest. Â I am fortunate enough to be part of the SSB team this year, and I’m excited about the opportunity. Â This is a great DX contest, as the DX stations are seeking to work the US stations. Â If we are fortunate enough to have good operating conditions, it should be a blast. Â Good 15m or even a chance 10m opening would just make everything better. If the conditions are anything like this past weekends’ DX CW, we are going to have a great contest and a lot of fun operating.
Looking at the 2009 results, it appears we have a real shot at creating ripples in the M/2 pond. Â For 2009 the top 10 in the W/VE M/2 class were:
Operating during the CQ WW SSB contest, we managed just over 3000 QSO’s. In better conditions, it is likely we can do better than that. But so will everyone else.
After looking at the descriptions of some of the other stations[see links above], its a tough task to join this crowd.  All of these stations have larger antenna farms than that at N1LN. Most of the top five have towers over 120′.  WE3C has a high 80m rotate-able dipole, as well as 4-squares for 160/80/40. Most also have superior geographic situations working in their favor as well. The promise of good conditions may also lure some stations back into the M/2 category. The poor conditions of the past few years must certainly have caused some to drop back to a single transmitter.
We can also hope that ‘other factors’ will NOT be equal.  But the chances of bad weather are probably higher in this part of the US than in these more favorable locations.  That is not a controllable factor. So it is probably best to think of things we might do to improve our performance.  Maximize multipliers.  Dig out the weak ones.  Be on the right band at the right time. Rate is king. Butts in chairs. A couple of cold 807’s to keep ‘YDU’s pipes going for the duration.
Should all other factors be equal, if we are to cause ripples in this pond we will need to be better operators than the other guys. I’d like to think we can at the very least keep them looking in their rear-view-mirrors.
By w4kaz, created on 2010.02.21 at 21:25:55 | last changed on 2010.02.26 at 13:06:57 |
The propagation conditions were better to EU than its been for quite a long while. That made the contest a lot more enjoyable than the DX contests have been over the past few years from here in the “cheap seats”[low power into low dipoles]. I’m sure the scores at the big stations will reflect the changes.
For my own part it went quite well-even with a small station
In the week before the contest, conditions were sounding good, with good openings on 15m and 20m. There was no real plan to put in a heavy effort here, but instead to have fun and get in some CW practice. Check. Mission accomplished.
Overall, with conditions so much better it was easy to stay in the chair longer than planned. 15m opened early on both days, just after local sunrise. 20m was hot in the early afternoon, and 40m and 80m both opened to Europe earlier than I usually notice. There were even a few QSO’s on the edges from 160m and 10m. The 160m Q’s were early in the evening, when I was hearing a few EU stations, but they weren’t hearing the dulcet tones emanating from the Kazshack. The 10m QSO’s were very fluttery, with lots of QSB, but worth chasing anyway.
The operating plan quickly morphed from “Search and Pounce” into finding a place to try to run. The original idea was to operate “unlimited” and play “S&P2R”. The network connection never got connected after tuning around a bit and shifting the gray matter into run mode. Wedging into a good spot is always a problem, but once found the good conditions had the stations lining up. Sometimes too many – a new experience from the KazShack. But good spots were hard to find and a lot of time running was done at lower rates up in the “nosebleed” areas higher in the band.
The runs brought in a lot of surprises. On 40m finding and working the KH6 was a surprise, as well as being called by a TA and a ZC up on 15m . Early on the second day I also found a JA1 on 40m, but no joy – working left coast. Some of the surprises were unusual enough to cause the brain to balk on copying the call sign correctly – V51 in particular. A search and pounce sweep on 10m and 15m bagged ZM1A on 15m, as well as five of the 10m mults.
15m showed signs of signals from Europe just after local sunrise, and they were able to hear me soon thereafter. Probably an hour or so earlier than that for the stations with good 15m antennas. But the lack of good antennas served to limit the volume of responses rather than shut the band to use. I was able to run stations on 15m after 1230z on the second day. Just a couple of hours later, and 20m became hospitable for a low power run above 14100.
Being a fan of 15m, not much time was spent in the local evening hours. Its difficult for the DX to hear the 100w stations through their local QRM and QRN. With 15m and 20m open, that’s not the disaster it has been in the past couple of years.
It will be interesting to see the scores and compare them to those of the past couple of years.
The Good:
Conditions!
More like fun, less like work
Decent runs
The Bad:
Problems with copy on unexpected calls
Pile up skills
The Ugly:
Possible problem with K2 KAT100 auto-tuner on Ant1, used ant2 for duration of the contest
By w4kaz, created on 2010.01.17 at 18:53:40 | last changed on 2010.01.21 at 17:24:01 |
Once again N1LN and N1YXU hosted the January NAQP’s at their home, and I was happy to be part of the SSB team. This year’s crew was N1LN, N1YXU, AA4FU, and myself, W4KAZ, operating under the NC4KW call sign.
It was a lot of fun.
Given the poor high band conditions over the NAQP CW weekend, there was a general agreement that the best initial plan might be to start on 20m and 40m, with the intent of keeping an eye on 15m and 10m in case of any possible openings. That proved to be a worthwhile strategy. We once again turned up a big ‘goose egg’ on 10m, not logging a single qso on the band. N1LN was able to improve last year’s 15m qso count with a short run and some S&P on 15m during his first shift and in between 40m runs.
20m was never great, but we brought our 20m qso count up to a more reasonable level, a big improvement over Jan 2009 contest. Conditions on 20m seemed really long right at the start of the contest. The upper antenna at 100 ft seemed to always be the best choice, and there seemed to be a narrow patch of good propagation into the upper midwest. Logged a bunch of Minnesota stations, and picked up a few other odds-n-ends from Minnesota westward. The western gulf coast from Louisianathru Texas were also being heard, but their signals were only half as good as Minnesotans. At the end of the first shift n 20m, there was not a single qso from sections 1, 2, 3 or 4. A somewhat lackluster result on 20m, at least for my own time in the chair on that band.
The other bands were also all improved over the 2009 totals, with better qso counts on each band. The multiplier counts were also better. The 80m mult count was tied with our 2009 efforts, but we improved our mults on 160m, 40m, 20m and 15m.
By coincidence, I wound up taking over the chair for 80m, and later 160m atjust the right time to begin trying to start runs on those bands. The first hours on each of those bands was interesting, with decent rates. For whatever reason, the beverages were showing a high noise level in the north and northeast directions. That made working the high population areas to our northeast more difficult, especially since so many stations calling were down at the noise floor. The 8’s, 9’s, and 0’s made up some of the slack, as they were easier to copy on the west and northwest beverage directions. The noise level began to decrease after local midnight, but rates had slowed by that time.
Some of the operating highlights were opening on 80m and 160m, and seeing the 60 minute rate meter[both stations combined] over 150, working with N1LN to get the 10 minute rate meter over 200, and then trying to keep it there. Later in the contest, 1400 Q’s became the short term goal, but N1LN caught a late burst of Q’s on 80m that put us over 1450 by the end of the contest.
In hindsight the total of 1469 qso’s logged is a new personal milestone. It is the first time I’ve been part of an operation that averaged over 60/hr for the duration of the event. [1469/(2*12)=61.2/hr]
By w4kaz, created on 2010.01.10 at 21:43:33 | last changed on 2010.01.10 at 21:51:39 |
Nothing great, but not too shabby. 352 Qsos total.
Conditions and observations: Early in the contest conditions seemed poor to me, but perhaps I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the start, I tried to get a run going on 20m and use the second radio for S&P, but neither was working well. The run radio was slow on the 20m dipole. I guess all of those tri-banders out there have the advantage. 20m seemed long from the start, as I was called by a strong AL9A. Alaska is unusual so early in the afternoon on my dipole.
The S&P on 15m was none too productive either. There were a few stations there, but lots of QSB. Most seemed to give up calling on 15m pretty quickly[or vanished due to changes in propagation]. Nothing heard on 10m, but not a lot of time listening there either.
It is also obvious that I’ll need to become a much better operator before using the second radio during a run is practical. Even a slow run. But the NAQP’s are the perfect contests to use as a test platform for learning SO2R techniques.
On the other hand, S&P with two radios was a lot more productive than S&P with a single radio. Better than using a single radio and loading the band map. With two radios, the utility of the second band map also comes into effect. The rate went up as soon as I switched from running to all S&P. I didn’t hit my goal of 60/hr while S&Ping, but it is a goal within reason, and it was easy to keepa 40 to 50 rate with two radios without much stress.
Thats the first couple of hours. The late afternoon was broken up into S&P fragments, capped with a hour long 40m run from 2220z to2320z. Then another gap peppered with a handful of quick S&P Q’s and a break for a sandwich.
Shifting down to 80m, I S&P’d my way to a mostly clear frequency at 3563.75, and thenheld a two hour run there from 0100z to 0300z. While the rates were meager for somebody like Bigg Gunn Kontester over at the Fi-Ni Report, both those hours on 80m were over 60/hr. I gave it up soon after W4HSA called me, and I just could not get his call correct, even when he resorted to sending his call suffix at about 5wpm. Such is life in LidVille. Duh-OH!
Still short of 300 Q’s. Tuning around 40m was discouraging, as the band sounded really long and there were not a lot of stations calling. 80m seemed like mostly dupes, so on a whim it seemed time to check conditions down on 160m.
The 160m antenna was playing well again. There were only three stations that were called with no answer. Soon enough stations were S&P’d to get to 340 Q’s in the log.
A few more passes on 80m and 160m, and the plug was pulled at around 0400z withjust over 350 logged. The total time on the clock was about 9 hours, but a lot of that was spent away from the radio in increments more than 5 minutes, but less than 30.
The Good:
Just over two consecutive hours with rates over 60/hr. First time I’ve had two such hours back-to-back.
160m antenna continues to function well
The Bad:
A moment of Murphy when switching to 80m. The kludged-together band pass filter switching resulted in a few moments of angst filled debugging when it appeared the 80m antenna was showing a high SWR. [Operator Error.]
No productivity early in the contest.
20m slow.
The Ugly:
Total mental shutdown trying to copy W4HSA. Too bad it can’t be blamed on being exhausted or a weak signal. Nope. Just a lid moment here in the KazShack.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.12.06 at 18:23:25 | last changed on 2009.12.06 at 19:30:23 |
Got a chance to work on the matching network for the inverted-L, adding in series capacitance, a choke, and balun. This gave me a good match at about 1840, and the SWR was decent from 1815 up to about 1860. The results seemed to be an improvement in the chances of being heard by most stations. That’s with just 100w. Decent results, given the low power and inefficient antenna.
Got in three really nice runs. The first was disrupted by another station sliding in. That was annoying, because the 10 minute rate was up over 100. After I moved, I settled into a nice 40 minute run that finally pooped out of its own.
There was only a limited amount of time available, so the periods from 2300 local “until” were chosen from both evenings. There seemed a whole lot less activity on Saturday evening. Logged about 3 hours and 130 Q’s Friday night but only 2 hours and 70 Q’s Saturday.
Found KH6ZM working a big pile-up on Friday night. Listened to that for a while, but I only heard him work a couple of east coast stations. The west coast and mid-west were pretty thick, so I didn’t waste time. Tuning up the band I found HI3 calling with no pile-up. Also worked a G3 and a few Caribbean stations.
The K9AY made the difference on several Q’s. The noise wasn’t bad, but There were a couple of relatively weak stations that really peaked on the K9AY but were in the noise floor and not copiable on the inverted-L. Armchair copy on the K9AY. Interesting. Many others were easier copy on the xmit antenna. Also interesting.
The matching network is another great application for a relay box, so I can have a good match at selected parts of the 160m band. With low power, the 3KV panasonic capacitors seemed up to the task, and I saw no signs of the SWR shifting when running, so I presume they are able to handle the 100w level. With several in parallel they seemed to handle the current. Given the bandwidths I am seeing, resonance points at 1815, 1840, 1865, 1900, and 1930 should serve the purpose.
Station:
Elecraft K2, 100w, into inverted-L and four direction K9AY rx array
The Good:
The matching network changes worked.
The inverted-L improvements seemed to help the station to be heard, but there’s no easy way to quantify that.
Rain shield added to cover feedpoint held up to nasty WX.
The Bad:
Not enough time available to operate.
Missed the start of the contest.
The Ugly:
None!
Summary:
Call: W4KAZ
Class: Single Op LP
QTH: NC
Operating Time (hrs): 5
Total: QSOs = 200 Sections = 50 Countries = 5 Total Score = 22,825
By w4kaz, created on 2009.11.23 at 07:55:59 | last changed on 2009.11.23 at 12:50:56 |
amended 11/23/2009, noon
This year’s SSB contest was great motivation to become a better CW OP.
It should have been obvious when the RigBlaster turned up dead Tuesday evening that Murphy had decided to grace the KazShack with his exuberant best during the SSB portion of Sweepstakes. Or maybe the K.I.S.S.(Keep It Simple, Stupid!) rule should have been followed when working around the hole the absent RigBlaster introduced into the scheme. The audio check test runs Thursday evening would have helped identify the problems, but the work-around was not prepared by then. Such is Life.
The long and short is that I really lidded up the bands with RF infested audio. The problem was much worse with the FT-920 for some reason, but the K2 was not a whole lot better. And yet, people still dug it out. The one curiosity in the entire thing is that the FT-920 monitor sounds pristine. It seems like I read somewhere the monitor on that radio is before the RF sections – but not sure why RF on the line is not causing the audio monitor to be distorted as well.
The DVK audio from the computer was the worst. The pipes suffered from that, since the voice is still not 100 percent from an issue over the holidays in 2008.
My intent was to enjoy the contest, and play with SO2R. As it turned out, it was more like SO(0.33)R – except the audio was crap from both radios. The nasty audio didn’t do much to encourage answers to CQ’s, so most of the activity came down to S&P. Even if I had planned to operate class “A”, I’d probably have ditched that and turned on the packet system anyway – even if it had resulted in a checklog.
Watching the spots was probably the highlight. I spent a lot of time spotting as much as I could find that was not already on the band map, as well as any stations that seemed to be having a slow period when we crossed paths.
I had better luck on 15m than on 20m. 20m is tough sledding with a dipole and low power compared to the other bands. Probably did not spend enough time on 40m. The resurrected 15m/10m rectangular loop paid off with a few mults I think I would have otherwise missed.
Since I had time to toy with the second radio(in rx anyway), I came to the conclusion that SO2R on SSB is going to be several orders of magnitude more difficult than on CW. It seems it will be a whole lot simpler to mentally filter out CW signals on either ear than with SSB.
With CW it’s just a stereo pile-up. With SSB it is more like Donald Duck talking with Peanuts’/Charlie Brown adults at a Van Halen concert, all played to the background melody of RTTY and slow scan tuner-uppers.
Quoth Snoopy…”Bleh”.
It is always curious to see which sections will be left on the table. No Quebec? That’s not normally one that goes missing. Rhode Island is a bit easier to miss from the QTH. The other three, MB, BC, NT, are sections that are “the usual suspects”, so missing those is no big surprise. AK and PAC turned out to be easier than normal when I stumbled upon stations from both before they were spotted. I picked up the first AB station in a similar manner, but later worked a couple more. I had an OK station call me during my one 40m run, but I was not able to copy him through the “donald duck” QRM. The 6’s were all tough with the poor audio.
Almost zero time was spent in packet pile-ups. Three calls then move along. That was probably necessary with Murph’s bad audio on top of the low power crappy antennas. No one trying to manage a pile up is going to waste time on a weak station with bad audio. Thats not to hard too understand, and it sure makes sense. So there is even less point in wasting time that way than normal.
Missed:
RI QC MB BC NT
The Good:
The SO2R switching performed flawlessly. I made a lot of use of the “follow active radio” feature when S&P.
The momentary contact buttons on the SO2R control are a great feature. It is really easy to jab a button to concentrate on one radio. This is especially true in SSB, because SSB is harder to separate mentally than with CW.
Need to implement foot switches for that momentary audio switching, as K4QPL suggested. That’s a great idea.
Lots of fun spotting folks otherwise lost in the cracks.
If his serial number reflected actual Q’s KA1ARB’s station was kicking butts and taking callsigns. Nice to see somebody was having a good contest.
The Bad:
Murphy. ’nuff said.
The Ugly:
Missed Thursday evening “test” contest, which may have helped fix the problems.
OK – maybe not quite ’nuff said. Initial cables for SSB audio seem susceptible to RFI. Need to solve that. Prefer to have the RF at the end of the coax and on the antennas rather than floating around the shack!
Computer DVK – crappy audio. WHY? Just another RFI problem?
By w4kaz, created on 2009.11.21 at 05:50:35 | last changed on 2009.11.20 at 17:50:56 |
A simple goal this weekend for Sweeps SS. I am going to try to have fun. If I feel like running stations and calling CQ, I’ll do that. If I feel like S&P, I’ll do that. If I feel like watching a college ballgame, zooom – there I go.
Deepest sympathies to UGa fans on the passing of UGA VII. That sure was One-Butt-Ugly bulldog. I suppose they won’t be too hard pressed to find another equally Butt-Ugly bulldog.
The station required some re-wiring to get ready for SSB SO2R. The interface cable for the K2 was in good shape, but the cable for the FT920 required a set of connectors for the PTT and microphone inputs.
It also appears that the Rigblaster NoMic has a problem. No audio getting through the mic side. I had a few 600:600 transformers in the parts box intended for this purpose. I was easiest to wire the transformer into my Mic/DVK/PTT switch box, so I made a quick modification. The 600:600 transformer is now in line with the DVK input. This box had been brewed up a few years back to solve two problems. The first was having bought the Rigblaster NoMic. It (duh-uh) has no mic input. That was fine, until it became clear I’d be using the interface along with a mic for SSB contesting.
So the home brew box handles the switching between mic and DVK audio. (DVK normally on, mic switched on/DVK off when PTT engaged. I use PTT rather than VOX, so that is a simple one. The box will also switch another two sets of relays. One set will make contact when PTT is on, essentially a PTT repeater that isolates the switched gear from the station. The other is a switch that is normally closed, and opens when the PTT is engaged. The second could be used to switch something off when PTT is engaged.
The SO2R box passes the CW,PTT, and mic to the radio selected in the logging software, so only one radio is engaged in transmit at a time.
To use the SO2R box in conjunction with the PTT repeat box, a few additional cables needed to be cobbled together. So this SSB Sweeps will be a trial by fire for the SO2R with DVK combo.
I think I will use packet and operate in the unlimited class again, although this may be the last time for a while. Two radio spot punching can be fun when the bandmaps are full.
It would be nice to match or exceed the 2007 or 2008 home QTH totals too. Maybe the 600 QSO hurdle will be cause for inspiration.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.11.10 at 06:42:00 | last changed on 2009.11.10 at 09:36:20 |
A big scheduling conundrum – LSU v. Alabama game scheduled at the same time as the start of SS CW. Hmmmm.
The allure of a possible shot at another run at the BCS title by LSU had me hedging at the start of the contest. No TV in the shack, nor time to set one up, so my compromise was I would hit the radio if/when the lads fall behind. I expected that to happen sooner rather than later, but the Tigers kept me from seriously attacking the initial contest bedlam for a couple of hours – before losing.
So I walk down into the shack at halftime, towards the end of the first hour. I put on the headphones. The right hand radio just happens to be sitting right on top of VE8EV. (Booming in too) BANG – Two calls, and the first QSO logged is the NT section. ?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!! First time I work them in SS.
Checking the spots next, VE7 and BC section – BANG second QSO logged on first call. WP3R – BANG, third QSO.
Three mults that are usually scarce here, all in about five minutes. Given my normal luck rounding up these guys, I considered pulling the plug right there. 😮 (I didn’t!)
Finished up the contest a bit behind the 2008 effort, but not by a lot. A new RFI problem kept knocking down the ISP connection on 80m, and on one of the 20m antennas.
Spent most of the contest flying low and slow, and the flak from the BigGunZ was intermittent. Spent most of my time running at the expected low-power-low-skill rates. Used the second radio a lot during the S&P sessions.
Two radio S&P gave me rates close to my average run rate, but I never got the 10 minute S&P rate above 50(goal was 60+, with over 45 for 60 minutes). Only S&P’d a short while looking for 6’s and 7’s. Found clear frequencies low in the band a couple of times for a couple of productive but short in duration runs.
Skipped past all of the packet pile-ups if they didn’t hear me after the second call. The two radio S&P rate was too good to waste time on a VO1 packet pileup.
Never heard a peep from WTX or ID. Didn’t look too hard either.
80m conditions were good. Some of the QRP stations sounded like high power big guns. The short skip to the NE and NW was good.
Missed:
WTX ID AK NL
Station:
SO2R with Elecraft K2 and Yaesu F-920.
Antennas:
80m: folded dipole @ 50ft
40m: 2 dipoles at right angles, @ 45ft, reflector added to E/W to form 2 el. wire yagi.
20m: E/W dipole @50ft
15m/10m: Nested rectangular loops, top at 60ft
The Good:
The 40m reflector. This played very well for a domestic contest. Interaction caused favorable signal levels in the desired directions, and about four S-unit difference in certain directions between the two.
Working NT section as the first QSO, only two calls.
Short runs on 20m, better than normal
Runs on 40m better than last year, worked more 6’s than before.
The Bad:
Missed the first two hours
No sweep. “ID” section I understand, but “WTX”?
The Ugly:
RFI knocking down ISP. Rendered one 20m antenna useless, and also a problem on 80m.
By w4kaz, created on 2009.11.07 at 16:34:08 | last changed on 2009.11.07 at 16:34:08 |
A few modest milestones to shoot for this weekend.
Improve S&P rate with second radio
Improve overall QSO totals
Improve overall accuracy
Improving accuracy would be the best improvement. Not enough butt in chair time over the last year for me to expect that to be realized. Conditions sound long already, attack 20m on Sunday. I expect there won’t be much 15m – we’ll see soon enough.
Have a pair of Koss QZ-99 cans. Easily the best sounding and most comfortable set I have tried on in years, I’m really looking forward to using them in the contest.
Been great to see all of the razzle, pep talk and enthusiasm on the club e-mail list. Go mice!
Station Issues:
Need to research RFI on N/S 20m dipole.
Fix 160 antenna.
How does new wire beam on 40m play?(added reflector to E/W dipole)
Is it possible to operate while glued to the boob tuube watching LSU-Alabama? Who the hell scheduled this? Aggggh!